


Sorry Baby

by claralannister



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Additional character tags to be added as we progress, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Killing Eve, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Murder, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Killing Eve fusion, Mental Health Issues, Modern Westeros, Obsession, Older Woman/Younger Woman, a healthy balance of fun shenanigans and people being murdered, and im having fun with it! so maybe you will too, and qyburn as konstantin because OBVIOUSLY, and tags in general, because there are a lot, but im writing it anyway because fuck you, eve!daenerys, for my sake and yours i will not tag every minor character who makes an appearance, nothing that's what, the exploitation of which has not had a good impact on cersei, the stark kids attempting to be a crack investigative team, this is a dumb idea and a ship no one cares about, veers further from killing eve as we progress, villanelle!cersei, what's better than narrative foils trying to kill each other and falling in love?, with catelyn as carolyn martens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26544379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claralannister/pseuds/claralannister
Summary: Daenerys Targaryen: a smart young MI5 employee who wants to live up to her full potential.Cersei Lannister: a prolific assassin with a past as dark as her penchant for violence.As their lives are pulled together and they enter a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, these two women develop a dangerous fascination with each other as they learn that the line between obsession and attraction can get very, very blurry.
Relationships: Catelyn Tully Stark & Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister & Qyburn, Cersei Lannister/Daenerys Targaryen, Daario Naharis/Daenerys Targaryen, Daenerys Targaryen & Varys, Missandei & Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 17
Kudos: 35





	1. Killer Cheekbones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When a politician from the Riverlands is assassinated, young MI5 worker Daenerys Targaryen tasks herself with tracking down the killer - who she strongly believes is a woman. Meanwhile, Cersei Lannister, Westeros's most prolific and elusive assassin, learns that she might not be as invincible as she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a thing that I've started writing now. I hope you enjoy it.  
> Also, if you haven't seen Killing Eve but you're interested in reading this, here's a synopsis from Wikipedia so you know what you're getting yourself into:  
> Bored with her protection role within the British intelligence agencies, Eve Polastri (Daenerys) is overly interested in female assassins, their psychologies and their methods of killing. After brashly investigating behind-the-scenes in relation to a witness she is handling, she is fired from MI5. However, to her delight, she is recruited by a secret division within MI6 chasing an international assassin who calls herself Villanelle (Cersei). Eve crosses paths with Villanelle and discovers that members within both of their secret circles may be more interconnected than she is comfortable with, but forms an obsession with Villanelle that is more than enthusiastically reciprocated. Both women begin to focus less on their initial missions in order to desperately learn more about the other.  
> It's a great show and I would absolutely recommend it.

Daenerys Targaryen had barely been awake for two hours, and she was already itching to go back to sleep. She rubbed her eyes as she stepped off the lift into the harsh bright lights of the third floor. 

You would think, this being the actual Secret Service, that they would be able to afford better lighting for their employees. But unfortunately for Daenerys’ retinas, that was not the case. 

“Happy Saturday!”

She did her best to hide the fact that her entire brain was contorted with a sleep-deprived headache, and put on an amiable grin for her friend. “Hey, Missandei.” 

“Are you alright? You didn’t show up at Varys’s last night, we were all really disappointed. You missed Varys singing ‘A Whole New World.’”

Dany scoffed. “From Aladdin?”

“Yeah.”

“On his own?”

“ _Yeah._ ”

“And you didn’t film it?”

“I would have if I’d known that Little Miss Workaholic was going to stand us up.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I just...I don’t know. I had some stuff to sort out.”

“Dany, the world will not implode if you take one evening off.”

“It fucking might!” She glanced at the coffee in Missandei’s hand. “What is that?” 

“Chai latte.”

“Damn it. You know, those things don’t actually have caffeine in them.”

“I know. Not everyone is a caffeine addict.”

“There are worse things to be addicted to.”

They walked down the musty corridor in silence for a moment, the only sound their heels click-clacking on the floor. 

“You want some anyway, don’t you?”

“Oh, gods, yes. Thank you.”

She took a sip of the drink, trying to pretend that the hot liquid would do anything to spur her awake in some sort of Starbucks-induced placebo effect. It didn’t work.

“Do you even know why you’re here.”

“Not particularly. Should I?”

“From what I can gather, a sex-trafficking politician from the Twins was murdered.”

“Oh, nooo,” Dany said sarcastically. “Was it a contract kill?” 

Missandei shrugged. “I wish I knew.” 

They rounded a corner, approaching the meeting room. “Right. Everyone’s in there already. Seven hells, are you actually late for once.”

She frantically checked her watch. “Only by one minute.”

“And…” Missandei peeped through the small pane of glass in the door. “It’s Catelyn Stark.”

“Seriously?”

“ _Yeah._ I don’t know what I’d do to work with her. She’s a stone-cold badass.”

“Shit. Do you want me to put in a good word?”

“No, I don’t want her to know I exist!”

“Fair enough.”

Without another word, Dany dived into the conference room, trying to gather herself together and do her best impression of an ambitious young woman who was certainly worth their time and not only wanted to climb the ladder of MI5 but deserved it, too. 

Which, to be fair, is exactly what she was. She just wasn’t really feeling like that person right now. 

Varys raised where his eyebrows had once been as she slid in. “Professional.”

“Thank you all for giving us your Saturday,” Petyr Baelish said, in his weird, unplaceable accent that shouldn’t have made Dany as uneasy as it did. “Turns out, murderers do not take weekends off the same way we do. This is the lovely Catelyn Tully Stark, from the Riverlands desk.”

He was definitely sitting way too close to Catelyn. She looked like she was one wrong move away from scooching her chair to the other side of the table.

“You’ve met Varys, and his late assistant-”

“Daenerys Targaryen, sorry about the-”

“They assess and provide diplomatic protection for visitors to Dragonstone and will be your liaison.”

Catelyn nodded appreciatively at Dany, and she tried to do the same back.

“There’s been an assassination in the Riverlands.” 

Daenerys pretended to be shocked at Catelyn’s revelation. 

“Walder Frey was found dead at the Twins. He wasn’t a particularly popular man, but he did have a very high profile.” 

She slid two black-and-white photographs over to Dany, and she made a show of peering at them. One of the man himself, and one of a nasty-looking stab wound on wrinkled skin. 

“He was coming home from a restaurant, with his wife - his eighth, might I add, wife number eight, Joyeuse Erenford - and somehow, an assassin managed to slice his femoral artery without either of them noticing. He bled for about a minute before he collapsed.”

 _Cool,_ Dany thought. Not that she approved of assassination or anything, but whoever this was, they were clearly very good at their job. It was impressive. 

“His wife is the only witness, but she fled the scene, and we traced her to Dragonstone. She was picked up at the station this morning, and needs protection.”

“Twenty dragons it was a woman,” Dany muttered to Varys. 

“You and your obsession,” he muttered. 

“What?” Catelyn asked. 

“Nothing,” they both said. 

“Anyway, we-”

“Was there any CCTV of the killer?” Dany asked. 

Several people at the table glared at her for interrupting, and she shrank back in her seat. 

“...No,” Petyr said. “It was a blind spot.”

“Well,” Catelyn said. “Thank you for your time. I imagine the girl is quite traumatised. Keep her safe, please, and surround her with humans.”

With that, and a curt nod to the rest of the table, the meeting was over. Dany began to hastily gather up her things as her colleagues began to file out. 

“I said,” she said, before she could second-guess herself, “that I thought it was a woman.”

Catelyn looked up, interest clearly piqued. 

Dany looked around sheepishly before continuing. “Mr Frey was a misogynist and a sex trafficker. He might not have considered a passing woman a threat.”

Cat’s blue eyes narrowed. 

“She must have been able to get close.”

She was inclined to follow that sentence up with a _sorry,_ or a _just a thought._ But she clamped her mouth shut, wanting to cling to her assertion. 

Catelyn nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and it sounded genuine. “I’ll consider that.”

“You and your obsession with female assassins,” Varys said as Catelyn walked away. “You know, it doesn’t make it feminist if it’s a woman doing the killing.”

“I never said it was!” Daenerys said. “I just...I don’t know. I want to meet that witness.”

“No. That’s not your job.”

“Just because you’re my boss, doesn’t mean you’re the boss of me.”

“That’s exactly what it means, Dany. Don’t give me those eyes, I’m only looking out for you.”

She sighed. “I know, I know.”

“Good.”

He walked towards the door, where Petyr was still fumbling with his briefcase. 

“Happy birthday, Varys,” he said. 

“It was only a bit of karaoke,” Varys huffed.

-

In all honesty, Cersei thought King’s Landing was overrated. 

Sure, it was fashionable, and the architecture was stunning, but there was this pervasive smell of piss that, no matter where you went, seemed to follow you. 

Maybe that was just her being cynical. Looking out for the veneer of perfection to slip wherever she could find it. 

And when she couldn’t find it, she would damn well create it. 

The old building she was staying in was, in some respect, the polar opposite of the rest of KL. The outside was old and crumbling, nothing special to look at in the streets filled with charming classical buildings, but the interior was perfectly charming. She was renting a lovely penthouse flat, and the balcony had just the most beautiful view. Cersei loved to stand there at night, drinking what was either her second or fourth glass of wine, looking down on the city like some malevolent god in the vessel of a thirty-eight year old woman. 

There were faint strains of classical music coming from the apartment, the radio she’d left on. It mingled perfectly with the cool night air and the hazy streaks of moonlight. 

She could have been a goddess, in this light, or at least she hoped people might think. 

“Cersei?” 

She started, some of the wine jumping out of her glass and spilling onto the cool tan stone of the balcony. She’d forgotten to lock the door again. 

Luckily, she recognised that voice, and didn’t reach for the discreet knife she had buried in her knee-high boots. 

“Qyburn,” she said, walking back inside and shutting the glass doors. “Is it too much for me to hope that this is just a friendly call?”

“Are we friends?”

She shrugged. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to one. Then again, I’m not sure it’s wise for someone like me to have too many friends.” 

She slumped down on the red velvet sofa in the lounge, allowing her facade to drop just a little. 

“I’m inclined to agree.”

“Are you calling me unlikeable?”

“Of _course_ not,” Qyburn said sarcastically. “You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever met. So kind, and so _humble.”_

She let out a laugh. 

“How were the Twins?”

“Good. Quick.”

“Quick?”

“He didn’t struggle. Honestly, I thought our good friend Mr Frey might have died without my interference anyway. Then again, I wouldn’t have been paid if he had, so…” She took another sip of wine. 

“How many glasses is that, now?”

“Fuck off.”

He chuckled. “Speaking of getting paid, they want me to give you this.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an obscenely fat wad of cash. 

Cersei raised her, obviously immaculate, eyebrows. “A bonus?”

He dropped it into her hand. “Another job.”

“Already?”

“It’s going to be a tight turnaround. Tomorrow.”

“ _Tomorrow?”_ She huffed. “I’m going to have a bloody hangover.”

“Sorry, Cersei, but _they_ cannot work around your drinking problem.”

She glared at him. “I could have worked my drinking problem around them if you’d told me sooner.”

“Anyway,” he said. “The Reach will be lovely this time of year.”

“The Reach? Who the hell am I killing now?”

“I have no idea. I’m far too inconsequential for that information.”

“You’ll never be inconsequential to _me.”_

He dropped a postcard and a piece of paper on the coffee table. “That’s your, uh, briefing, shall we say.”

She was silent as he picked up his leather briefcase once again. “I must be going, I’m afraid.” 

“Somewhere important you need to be?” 

“You keep your secrets, Cersei, and I’ll keep mine.”

She nodded knowingly, raising her wine glass to her lips once again. 

Without another word, he slinked out of her apartment, leaving her alone again. 

Once he was gone, she picked up the postcard he’d left, looking over the picturesque views on the back. _Hmm. The Reach._

_-_

“Okay,” Daenerys said. “The wife’s name is Joyeuse Erenford, and-”

“Why do you type so loud?”

“What?” 

Missandei nodded at her computer. “You know what I mean. What did your keyboard ever do to you?” 

“Shush,” she said, doing a mock-calming motion with her hand, making Missandei snicker. “Calmmm. Focus. Anyway, we’ll need two officers on each shift. Where do they want her overnight?” 

“Don’t know. She’s still at the station. Apparently, she’s properly traumatised.”

Daenerys looked pensively at the image of Joyeuse on her screen. “I’m going down there,” she said decisively. 

“On your own?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Just…”

“Did I sing Disney?”

Varys walked into the office with no preamble. 

“Yes,” Dany and Missandei said in unison.

“By myself?”

“You sang both parts,” Missandei scoffed. “Switching back and forth between Aladdin and Jasmine. You know, if this whole MI5 thing doesn’t work out, Varys, you could have a career on the West End.”

Varys scoffed. “Very funny. I hope you didn’t record it.”

“Why?” Dany asked. “You could have gone viral.”

“I work for the Secret Service, Daenerys. I rather suspect that _going viral_ defeats the purpose of that.”

“Fair enough.” She picked up her dragon-scale handbag. 

“Where are you going?” 

“The bathroom.” 

He raised his eyebrows, an expression that said _you can’t fool me._

“...I see. Have you done the report?”

“Of course.”

“Good work. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like my twenty dragons.”

“Your what now?”

“The CCTV footage came through. It was a man.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Since the meeting?”

“Petyr just said.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Daenerys. Please. There’s a difference between thinking it’s a woman and wanting it to be a woman.”

“Who’s a woman?” Missandei asked. 

Dany sighed, and reached into the pocket of her blazer. She pressed a five-dragon note into Varys’ open hand, whacking it down dramatically. 

“You can have the rest when I see the footage.”

“I meant what I said, by the way. This is for your own good. I know what you can be like, Dany: I admire your work ethic, but you’re as stubborn as anything. Please. Stay out of it.”

She cast her eyes down. “I will.”

“Good. Now, I’ve got a meeting with our good old friend Mr Baelish, so if you see him falling out of the second-floor window, I was with you the entire time.”

She nodded. “You’ve always got an alibi in me.” 

“Good.”

“I want to see that CCTV!” she called after him, but he was already gone by the time the words left her mouth. 

“What was that all about?” Missandei asked. 

“Nothing!”

“...I’m not sure I buy that for a second, but okay.”

She stuffed a few papers into her bag. “I’m going to the station. Don’t tell Varys.”

“But-”

“Missandei, I love you so, so much. You are literally one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met, and I promise I will owe you a huge favour after this. Just, please.” She put her hands on her friend’s desk. “Don’t tell him.”

Missandei smiled. “Alright. But I will hold you to that favour.”

“I know you will.” She straightened the collar of her shirt. “You’re a star. See you!”

Dany had put far too much confidence into thinking that Joyeuse would be in any fit state to give up information.

She was mostly incomprehensible - shock, the officers had explained - and mostly sat huddled in her chair, shaking, her thick woolen jumper wrapped around her like a cocoon.

She tried asking a few questions, but she mostly just got a wide-eyed whimper.

 _This is what I get for meddling outside my job._ “Ms Erenford, I know this is a very difficult time for you, but we need you to help us catch the person who killed your husband.”

That set her off again, and Dany kicked herself. 

“Do you know of anyone who might want to harm you while you’re in Dragonstone?”

She shook her head. Or maybe she was just quivering.

“Did you see the person who...did this? Can you give us any descriptors, or…?”

“I…” She wrung her hands. “She h- she had-”

She? _She? Fuck yes._

“She what? Joyeuse, stay with me, you’re doing a great job.”

“C - cheekbones…” Joyeuse touched her own face. “Really sharp cheekbones. Like you could…” Her voice sped up suddenly, growing frantic. “So sharp, like you could cut diamond on them, and-“

She took a deep breath and started sobbing again, her frail body trembling with each cry. 

_She. She. She._ Dany could hardly feel victorious, seeing this woman left like this and knowing what she’d suffered. But she clung to that little crumb of information, even though the rest of their conversation proved mostly futile.

It was dark out by the time she left the station. She steered herself into a dark alleyway to call Missandei without being spotted, her mind racing as she waited for her to pick up.

“Dany?”

“Missandei! Hey.” She was talking too fast. “Are you still at the office?”

“Yep. I know, that’s usually your trick. What’s the problem?”

“Um…that assassin from the Dreadfort case, what was her name?”

“Myranda Royce?”

“Yes. Her. Can you pull up her file for me?”

“Um...here we go.”

“How sharp are her cheekbones?”

She could practically hear Missandei’s eyebrows raising in judgement. “What?”

“Does she have killer cheekbones that you could cut diamond with?” She huffed. “Like if you saw her, that’s what would stand out to you first.”

“Um...not particularly. Listen, Dany, I know you love the whole female-assassin thing, but-”

“What about any other female assassins on record?”

“Um, there’s a few, but they’re all dead.”

“Anyone new on the scene?” 

She could hear Missandei typing, and she gritted her teeth. 

“No.”

Ugh. “Okay. Thank you. And please don’t tell anyone I asked for that.”

“Of course. All our hotlines are completely confidential, ma’am.”

“Shut _up.”_

“Love you too!”

-

Qyburn had been right. The Reach was lovely, much nicer than the clammy heat of King’s Landing. It was less claustrophobic, the open roads and rolling, arid fields perfectly pleasant to drive down in someone else’s sleek black car. 

The party was being held in an old stately home in the countryside, belonging to some rich old politician, Hightower something-or-other. The first name escaped her, but she remembered the face, and that was all she needed. 

She fidgeted with the ring on her finger as she approached the house, making sure it was secure. 

Her days of scaling walls might have been slightly behind her - and impossible with the oxblood stilettos she was wearing right now, anyway - but there was a forgotten gate at the back entrance to the garden that suited her just fine. The poor man must have thought he was in no danger whatsoever. How stupid of him. 

The party was in full swing on the lawn, guests talking, laughing, drinking. You could always tell the type of party where everyone wanted to be there from the type that was more of an obligation, and this was certainly the former. There was hardly a face without a smile on it.

She plastered a smile on her own face as she scanned the crowd for her target.

There he was. Leyton Hightower, over by the drinks table, grinning in an endearing old-man way, laughing with a child.

Something curled inside Cersei’s stomach, something resembling emotion. _Tommen. Myrcella. Joffrey. They’re all gone now, and-_

Sir Leyton hurled a bucket of water onto the child, and he shrieked.

“You’re horrible!” he said indignantly, storming away from him. “I’m going to get you for this!”

“He takes after his grandfather,” Leyton said, and a chuckle arose from the crowd.

Cersei blinked back the memories of her own children, crushing them like graphite into diamonds. _That was Cersei Baratheon. Cersei Baratheon had children, watched them die, grieved them, tried to avenge them. Not Cersei Lannister._

Her smile widening, she turned after the scorned child, and walked into the house.

No one noticed her as she slipped up the stairs. They certainly should have, her red silk dress standing out among the floaty pastels the people of the Reach seemed to favour.

She had come wearing a warning sign. It was almost their fault, then, if Leyton was murdered, because all the clues were right there.

The child was frantically drying himself off in the bathroom. 

“Oh, dear.” Cersei’s voice was soft as she approached him. “That’s not going to work, now.”

He looked up at her in disappointment.

She sucked air in through her teeth. “He got you good, didn’t he?”

“It went up my nose.”

“Ugh. What a bastard.” She walked closer, leaning down to look him in the eye, her smile still bright and comforting. “Do you want to help me play a trick on him?”

He nodded, still sulking. 

“Grandpa!”

“Tell him you have a gift for him,” Cersei said, as the child stared out of the window. She still didn’t know his name. She had no intention of learning it. 

“I have a gift for you!”

She heard a hearty laugh. “A gift, eh?” 

“Is he coming up?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good. Now.”

She sprung up, and the child did too, that glint of mischief in his eyes. 

“Hide in the bathroom, okay?”

“But I don’t want to!”

She picked him right up and flung him into the bathroom. He shrieked a little, and she clamped a hand over his mouth. 

“If you make a sound, I will kill you as well, alright?”

She set him down on the tiled floor. 

“Will you eat me?” 

“Hmm. I might have to, now that you’ve made a sound.”

He clamped a hand over his mouth, and she shut him in there. 

“Little shit,” she muttered. She smoothed down the embroidered covers on the bed and sat down, looking completely innocuous. 

It was far too humid, and she shifted uncomfortably after sitting still for a moment. Her hair was growing frizzy. 

She twisted the ring on her finger again. 

“Hello? What is it?” 

The door burst open. 

“Oh.” He frowned at the sight of her. “Have you seen a little boy, uh…”

“Yes,” she said brightly. “I locked him in the bathroom.”

Leyton’s frown deepened, if that was possible. “What? Why?”

“This is a lovely throw.” It wasn’t. It was garish, and too bright, like everything in the Reach. “Who made it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s fine.” She got to her feet, flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I close the door?” 

She wasn’t asking. 

“What is your name?”

“You can call me Cersei,” she said. “Happy anniversary, by the way.”

He looked her up and down, and the lechery made her want to vomit. “So, are you the gift?” 

She smirked seductively. “I have...been sent to you, yes.” 

“You’re a very beautiful woman.”

He reached out to stroke her cheek, and she immediately flung his arm away. 

“I know. But really, you should ask before you touch a person.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite alright.” She extended her slender hand in front of him. “Call me old fashioned, but I would appreciate a little courtesy first. How about a kiss?” 

“Of course.” He leaned down to kiss her hand. 

And that was when she stabbed him. 

Anyone might have noticed that the citrine ring on her finger was beautiful, and very expensive. What they might not have noticed was the switch on the back, and the poisoned blade lurking behind the gemstone. 

He certainly didn’t, until it was buried in his face. 

He began to scream and cry. She kept twisting. 

The song the band was playing outside ended as he fell to his knees in a grand flourish. 

“Grandfather?” Cersei rolled her eyes. “Can I come out now?”

“Shut up, you little brat,” she hissed. He had to be almost dead, by now. Sometimes she liked to use more slow-working poisons, liked to watch as they slowly realised the life was slipping from them and choked out before her, but today she had to be quicker. 

She slipped the ring off her finger, leaving it embedded in his skin, and he toppled to the ground. 

“Grandfather!”

“I should be going,” she whispered. He was too far gone to respond. 

She walked out of the room. 

“I’m coming out now!”

She was already halfway down the stairs before she heard the child scream. 

It was a good thing everyone else was outside, because the delighted look on her face would have placed her under immediate suspicion if anyone had noticed her. 

But no one did. No one ever did. 

-

Dany’s relationship with Daario was complicated, to say the least. 

He wasn’t quite her _boyfriend,_ not really, but they’d taken to living together in a strange sort of roommate-slash-fuckbuddy arrangement. She got the sense that he wanted it to be something more, that if she asked him to be her boyfriend he would say yes in a heartbeat, but he clearly didn’t want to voice those feelings, and she didn’t quite reciprocate them. 

Not that she didn’t enjoy the sex. She just didn’t quite feel as romantically attached to him as she had with previous boyfriends. One of these days they were going to have that difficult conversation, and that scared the shit out of her, because they were both too poor to afford a flat this nice in the middle of Dragonstone on their own. 

Besides, a proper boyfriend wouldn’t leave her to her own devices as much as he did, and might start asking questions about her job that she really didn’t want to answer. 

He appeared at the door right as she brought out a grisly image of Walder Frey’s cadaver. 

“Bloody hell.”

“Yeah.”

“I was going to ask you if you wanted some fish and chips, but I can’t imagine you’d have much of an appetite after...that.”

“No! No.” She smiled amiably. “Fish and chips sound lovely.”

He brought them back quickly, and she hadn’t realised quite how hungry she’d been until the smell of greasy chips was right under her nose. 

“Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

He looked up from his plate of fish. “Sure.”

“How would you kill me, if you had to?”

He laughed. “Uh...I haven’t really thought about it. Push you down the stairs?”

“What stairs?” 

“Oh, right. Um...put poison on your chips?” 

“Very funny.” She took an exaggerated bite of her chip. 

“How would you kill me, then, Daenerys?”

“I’d paralyse you with saxitoxin and suffocate you in your sleep. Chop you into the smallest pieces I could manage, boil you down, put you in a blender, take you to work in a flask and flush you down the toilet.”

Daario raised his eyebrows. “Should I be concerned?” 

“No! No. I’m not going to kill _you.”_

“But you’re going to kill...someone?”

“No one is getting killed. Well...it’s a work thing.”

“Do you promise me you’re not an international spy?”

She slumped back in her office chair. “I wish. MI5 is not as interesting or cool as movies make it look. It’s mostly just _hearing_ about interesting things, and doing paperwork about them.” 

“Sounds much more fun than my job. Although, a lot more difficult, too.”

“Yeah, no shit. Look at all this.” She gestured at her cluttered desk. “It’s a mess.”

Strictly speaking, she didn’t _have_ to be doing any of this. It wasn’t technically her job. But Daario didn’t need to know that. 

“You work too hard,” Daario said. “Go easy on yourself.”

 _Yeah, yeah,_ she thought, but outwardly she just smiled. “Maybe.” 

“I mean, if I had to look at dead bodies all day, I’d be worn out.” 

“Hmm.” She turned her attention back to the TV. There was some stupid spy movie on, that they hadn’t really been watching, but hadn’t bothered to change the channel. 

A woman came on the screen, presumably the archetypical femme fatale of the story. She was holding a cigarette in one hand, and a gun in the other, and her neckline was almost obscenely low. 

_Are we looking for a woman like that? All glamorous and sexy, a caricature of a female assassin, going around the Seven Kingdoms killing people? Or are we looking for someone else entirely?_

The femme fatale on screen raised her gun. 

“Do you want to have sex?” Daenerys asked, snapping her head to look at Daario. 

“...Sure.”

-

If anyone except Qyburn had caught her passed out on the sofa with the book she’d been trying to read splayed out across her sleeping face, Cersei would have immediately stabbed them seventeen times in the chest. 

It was a good thing, then, that it was him who plucked her copy of Gone Girl off her face and shook her awake. 

“Good afternoon to you too,” she groaned, slowly waking up. The sun was so _bright,_ and it stung her eyes. 

“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying your day off.”

She sat upright. “I had to postpone yesterday’s hangover for today. Had a gap in my schedule, you know how it is.”

“I’m afraid I don’t. But unfortunately, I’m not here for chit-chat.”

“Then what exactly are you here for?” 

“Three days ago, Walder Frey was found dead in a street in the Riverlands.”

She gave a dramatic mock-gasp. “Oh, gods, really? That’s _awful.”_

“The murder took place in a CCTV blindspot.”

“How will they _ever_ catch the killer now?” She put a hand on her heart. “My heart _bleeds_ for him. Just like his femoral artery.”

“Now, his wife was apparently with him while he died. That would be fine, except she was found unharmed.”

She dropped the sarcastic act. 

“She is currently in Dragonstone, where she will be interviewed as a principal witness to the murder.” 

_Shit._ “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

 _Double fucking shit._ “I couldn’t have got close enough to her without-”

“I’m not the one you need to be making excuses to, Cersei.” His tone wasn’t harsh or angry, in fact he did seem to be the archetypical _not mad, just disappointed_ towards her. “Your train leaves at three. Make this one tidier, alright?” 

She nodded. “You can count on me?”

“Can we? Because your fancy poisoned ring is all over the press.”

She’d thought that had been rather discreet, especially since she hadn’t left it at the scene. Apparently not. 

“They won’t catch me,” she said dismissively. “I’m untraceable, everyone knows that.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes!”

He raised his eyebrows, and he might not have meant this by it, but Cersei took it as meaning _your narcissism is getting in the way of you doing your job properly, which is a problem for me as much as it is Him with a capital H._

She swallowed. “Is the train at least first class?” 

“Yes.” 

“Thank fuck.” 

She began to gather her things together, making sure to dog-ear where she’d left off in _Gone Girl._

_Dragonstone, here I come._

-

“Can I have some of your sushi?”

Varys looked up from his paperwork. “Don’t you have your own lunch?” 

“I didn’t have time to get any.”

“You work yourself too hard, you know. One of these days you’re going to burn out.”

“I’ve already burned out, Varys. I burned out way back in Year Eight, and I’m still burning.”

“That’s much too metaphorical for twelve pm on a Monday.”

“Sorry.” She took a bite of his sushi. “Delicious.”

He looked her up and down. “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“You’ve got that look in your eyes. That Year Eight blazing fire that says _I’m up to something.”_

“So now you like my metaphors.”

“Not the point. What is it?”

She sighed. “The assassin was a woman.”

“Daenerys, you can have your twenty dragons back if you really want them-”

“I interviewed the witness-”

“There wasn’t - wait. Did you just say you interviewed the witness?” 

Ah, shit. 

“Dany!”

“I know, I know, but - listen. This woman killed Walder Frey, and either someone is stopping it from coming out, or someone is too lazy to follow it up.”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“And what if I am?”

“So what if it was a woman, anyway? I don’t care if it was a grumpkin!”

“Yeah, but…” She rummaged in her bag for a newspaper clipping. “She’s new, and she’s prolific. Look at this. _Hightower found dead with a poisoned ring embedded in his face._ I don’t even want to get into the ring thing, but I’ve been compiling these cases for months. Oldtown. Duskendale. The Twins. Possibly as far north as Wintertown. She could be anywhere right now. Joyeuse is the last chance we have of finding her-”

“And the interviewer can find out whatever information she can give us.”

“What if they’re in on it?” 

“In on what?”

She threw her hands up in frustration. “It!”

“It.”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed in frustration. “I know you want to climb the ladder, Dany. You want to impress Catelyn, work your way up to a leadership position. You’re ambitious, and I respect that, but you cannot let that blind you.”

“You’re the one who’s been blinded.”

“Just...go to the hospital. Make sure Joyeuse is safe, and then _leave._ Don’t do anything weird. I’m-”

“Looking out for me, I know. You’re not my dad, Varys.”

He raised his eyebrows. “This is about your dad, now, is it?” 

Oh, she really shouldn’t have mentioned her father. That was a whole other kettle of worms. “Please don’t go full Freud on me. I was just saying.”

“But really, Dany. I am looking out for you.” 

_I don’t need you to look out for me. I know I’m right, and I’m going to prove it to you._

But she just smiled and nodded. “I know.”

-

They told her Joyeuse needed a few more minutes before she’d be ready for interviewing. The nurses hadn’t seemed too pleased to see her, and that gave her pause, but hopefully they wouldn’t want to poke their nose into the affairs of the Secret Service far enough to realise that this wasn’t Dany’s job. 

So she’d gone to the loo, to pass the time, not because she really needed it. There was a certain peace to be found in the grey clinicalness of hospital loos, the smell of bleach oddly cleansing. 

She stood there in front of the mirror, looking at herself. The collar of her button-up was rumpled, and her hair was starting to unravel from its intricate braid. 

The lighting in there was shit, and she had to squint in the mirror a little to see what she was doing as she unravelled it and did it up again. 

“Ahh…” She got to the end of the braid and reached for her hair tie, pulling it off her wrist. 

She barely registered the nurse coming out of the cubicle behind her until she was at the sink next to her, turning the tap on with a loud thwack. 

The noise startled her, and she snapped the hair tie. 

“Shit!”

“Sorry,” the woman said. “Did I startle you?” 

“No, no…” Dany bent down to pick it up. “I should have been paying more attention.” 

She looked at the flimsy string of elastic in her hand, and then looked up at the woman. 

She was strikingly beautiful, which took Dany by surprise. She might have been wearing hospital slacks, but she seemed far more regal than was right for those clothes. 

She did have _very sharp cheekbones. Like you could cut diamond on them…_

 _No. I’m letting this get to my head, like Varys said. Looking for this assassin or whatever she is in everything. I need to stop._ “Do you happen to have a hairband?” 

“I might. Hold on…” She rummaged in her pocket. “Yes.” 

She held it out to Dany, and smiled. 

“Thank you so much,” she said. She felt guilty for comparing this woman to a nameless assassin. _I won’t do that to anyone else. I need to keep a clear head._

“No problem.” With that, the nurse nodded curtly, and walked out. 

Thank the gods for strangers in bathrooms, she thought as she finished off her hairdo. 

Her phone went off, embarrassingly loud for such a small bathroom. “Hello?”

“You were right. There’s no CCTV.” 

_Ha,_ she thought, even though this was definitely not a _ha_ moment. 

“We have been well and truly bullshat,” Varys said. “Keep that woman safe.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

She shut her phone off, and hastily walked back to the ward, realising she had been away from Joyeuse for too long. _Neglecting my job, too._

The lobby was oddly quiet, but she didn’t think much of it. Nor did she notice the silence that permeated the hospital. 

It wasn’t until she got back to the ward when she noticed something was wrong.

Although anyone surely would have raised an eyebrow or two at the sight of three doctors streaked in blood lying dead on the floor, and a patient flatlined in her bed. 

Dany grabbed the doorframe as the world tilted. “Oh my god. Joyeuse! Joyeuse!”

The word came out as a roar, making her throat rough and hoarse from screaming. 

“No. No.” She dashed towards the hospital bed. “Joyeuse! Joyeuse, stay with me!”

She tried to administer CPR, but it was futile. She was gone. 

“No no no no no no no no no - HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME!”

There was a beeping coming from somewhere. 

“HELP ME! HELP ME!”

No one came. No one came to help her. There was just the beeping, and the blood, and -

“If they fire you, I’m going down with you.”

An hour later, she was still shaking. Her fingernails were caked in blood. 

“I won’t let you do that, Varys.”

“I’ve been looking for an excuse to call Petyr a dickswab for years.”

“I’m the dickswab.” Dickswab didn’t even begin to cover it. “I should have requested more security, been more careful, and now an innocent woman is dead.”

“You had two armed officers. You did the right thing.”

_No, I didn’t. I fucked up. I as good as killed Joyeuse._

Petyr and Catelyn walked into the room, the slam of the door echoing in Dany’s head. 

“Have you made your statement?” Petyr asked. 

Dany nodded. 

“That could have gone better. I don’t want to say you had one job, but-”

“Oh, piss off, Petyr.”

“I don’t think you should speak to me like that right now, Miss Targaryen.”

“Just tell me what I need to do.”

Petyr stared her down. “You’ve conducted an illegal investigation and manipulated a victim, and-”

“Petyr-”

“Don’t interrupt me. You failed at your real job, because you were too busy conducting your pretend job, which if I’m not wrong, was going to earn you twenty dragons, which you both seem to think is the most important thing about this case.”

What a fucking twat. “The most important thing is that I was right-”

“No, the most important thing is that four people are dead and it’s all your fault!”

She clenched her eyes shut. 

“What were you right about?”

 _What?_ The oddly soft tones of Catelyn Stark’s voice broke through the tense silence. 

Dany took a deep breath. Let this all be for something. “Joyeuse was in shock, but she said, about the killer, that _she had sharp cheekbones like you could cut glass on them._ That’s all we could get out of her, but-”

“And how do you know that?”

“You know exactly how I know that. I conducted an illegal investigation, didn’t I?”

“You’re fired.” Petyr looked irritatingly smug as he said that, and Dany clenched her fists.

“You’re a dickswab!” she retorted.

“I’m a what?”

“Hey!” Varys said. “I wanted to say that!”

“Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Oh, right. Well, then.” Varys turned towards Petyr. “You are a dickswab. And your facial hair makes you look like a pedophile.”

“Oh, shit!” Dany said, far too enthusiastically. “Nice one.”

Catelyn just raised her eyebrows. “I can see there’s going to be some reshuffling in your department.”

Petyr just nodded plaintively. “I suggest you both leave immediately. Your things will be sent to you.”

“So we’re both-”

“You’re both fired, Varys.”

“Gotcha.” With that, he and Dany both got out of their chairs. 

_I just lost my job,_ she thought, as she lay pathetically on the sofa. _I just lost my job, and four people are dead, and this is all my fault, and -_

The doorbell rang. 

She wiped away her tears. Daario must be back from his mate’s house early, and she wasn’t ready for him to see her in this state -

“Daenerys.”

Her eyes widened. “Hello.”

Standing at the door to her flat, was no less than Catelyn Tully Stark. 

“Do you need anything from the shop?” 

Was she delusional already? “What?”

“Milk, or…”

“Butter.”

“Butter?” 

“Butter.”

She hadn’t been expecting to take a late-night trip to Tesco Express with Catelyn, but stranger things had certainly happened. 

“Do you live with a partner?”

“No, uh - well, yes. Daario’s not my partner, but we’re...it’s complicated.”

“I see.”

“You?” 

“My husband’s dead.”

She said it so casually, Dany hadn’t been sure if she’d heard her correctly. 

“Oh. I’m...I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t apologise. You didn’t kill him.”

“From what happened tonight, who knows who else I’ve killed?”

She hadn’t meant to make a joke about it. It just sort of happened, and Catelyn snorted. 

“You’re funny. That’s good, I thought you might be. Butter, was it?”

“Um...yes. Listen, it’s nice of you to do...whatever this is, but-”

“We think she’s been operating for two years across ten countries. She’s highly skilled, untraceable, and she is getting on my last nerve.”

Dany’s jaw dropped. Her. She was talking about _her._

“When you’re feeling perkier, I’d like to buy you breakfast. You know the cafe by Dragonglass Hill?”

“I - yes?”

“Nine in the morning. Sunday. I’ll wait for ten minutes.”

Was this really happening. “Okay?” 

“Get the butter, then. Otherwise Daario might think you’re cheating on him.”

“I don’t think he-”

“He’d sooner think you were unfaithful than a secret agent.”

“Well, I’m not a proper secret agent, I’m just…”

“Aren’t you?” She raised her eyebrows. “See you Thursday, Daenerys.”

She began to walk away. 

“Dany.”

“What?” 

“Most of my friends, colleagues, anyone really...they call me Dany.”

Catelyn nodded. “See you Thursday, then, Dany.”

She walked away, leaving Dany standing in the dim light of a Tesco, clutching a pack of lightly salted butter and struggling to comprehend what the fuck had just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought about it, I know this is a very niche pairing and kind of a weird idea but I've kind of latched onto it, and I have a lot of characters and plots I want to bring into the fray, so stick around for that, maybe? Either way, I hope you had some semblance of entertainment. :)


	2. Army of Starklings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn urges Daenerys into the fray, and they begin to put the pieces together. Cersei runs into some unusual trouble at work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to try and do a chapter per episode, but that got long. So this is sort of the equivalent of the first half of episode 2, and the next chapter will be the other half. But the episode-by-episode structure will probably disintegrate soon-ish.

Gulltown was as boring as it was ugly, the grey, stormy sea just as much of an eyesore as the endless office buildings of the same colour. 

Cersei never liked doing work in such boring places, preferring to enjoy the aesthetic a little, or failing that, to have a storm to match her rage. Just a _little_ pathetic fallacy would have been nice. 

But chasing a nameless enemy of her employer around a deserted office in the dead of night was much more fun than anything else she could have been doing that night, she supposed. 

He left a wreckage of paper and filing cabinets in his wake as he evaded her, while she walked calmly through it, heels landing softly on the carpet like the velvet tread of a predator. 

“What do you want?” he shouted, as she cornered him at a desk. That was the problem with these offices - so few places to hide. Though being chased by an assassin probably wasn’t a standard workplace activity for wherever this was. 

“I have children! A family, please! Tell me what you want, I can give it to you.” 

He was on the other side of the desk, coated in a thick sheen of sweat, and they were almost dancing with each other from across it, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse. 

“I have money. I can give you all the money you want, please!”

“All I want,” Cersei crooned, “is for you to stand still.” 

He grunted and threw a hole puncher at her. 

Cersei just laughed as she ducked, feeling adrenaline course through her veins. 

She reached for the gun tucked inside her red velvet blazer, and pointed it at him - but too late, as he crouched behind the desk. 

_Oh, big mistake._ She grinned as she rounded the corner to see him huddling in the foetal position, trembling at her feet. 

“Who are you?” 

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know.” She raised the gun, pointing it right at his head. No leaving him to squirm and bleed out now - she’d had her fun, but it was time for it to come to an end. 

“Why are you doing this?”

 _Huge question._ “Because,” she said. “It’s fun.”

_BANG!_

_Not the right answer,_ she thought, as she pocketed the gun. _But maybe part of it._

She unloaded another round into his head for safekeeping. 

_

“Catelyn?”

The bell echoed through the quaint little cafe as Dany pushed the door open. Catelyn was sitting at a table in the middle: the only customer in the building. 

“Dany!” She looked up from her newspaper. “You came.”

“Of course. I would never pass up this, uh…” She looked sceptically around the cafe. “Opportunity.”

“You can speak freely here, if that’s what you’re concerned with. Now sit down.”

Daenerys obliged. 

“Now, I’m not very good with the whole ‘how are you’ business, so I’ll dive right in.”

She did her best job-interview smile. “Go ahead.”

“You’re from...Pentos, aren’t you?” 

“Yes. Well. No. I’m from Dragonstone, but when my parents died I moved to Pentos with my brother. But I went to university here, and I figured I may as well stay here. But I’m not - do I have an accent? I didn’t think I had an accent, I mean my brother didn’t - he’s dead now, Viserys, he died a few years ago, he didn’t have an accent, so neither did I - oh, god, I shouldn’t have said that he died so casually, I don’t mean that it was just a casual thing, of course not, it was-”

“Daenerys.”

“Sorry.” She felt like an idiot. Catelyn had just been trying to make conversation, and Dany had made it into a mess. 

“Anyway, when someone gets fired, their hard drive and computer usually get wiped.”

 _Shit._ “Um…”

“We found this.”

She pulled a folder out of her handbag and placed it on the table. 

Dany opened it immediately, and breathed a sigh of relief when all that was enclosed was her research into the killings. 

“Oh. I thought you were about to show me all the pictures we took of Petyr eating.”

Catelyn chuckled at that. “No. But I would quite like to see those, have a laugh at them, if my schedule allows.”

Dany flipped the page. More of the research that she had compiled, except instead of being kept messily in tabs and folders and crumpled in her desk, it was all laid out for her. Convenient. 

“Did anyone ask you to compile this information?”

“No, I just…”

“Has anyone else seen it?”

She shook her head.

“Why did you do this, then?”

“I…” Dany searched for a valid explanation, because if she was being honest, she didn’t have one. 

Conveniently, a waiter walked past right at that time. 

“Can I get an, um, a quadruple espresso?”

The waiter looked at her with all the judgement of a thousand juries. “A what?”

“A quad - it’s just two double espressos in one cup. Please?” 

Catelyn raised her eyebrows. “That sounds like a potentially lethal dose of caffeine. I’ll have one, too.”

The corners of Daenerys’ mouth twitched. At least Catelyn had a sense of humour. 

The waiter nodded. “Right away.”

Catelyn watched him as he scurried off. 

“So,” she said. “You seem to know a lot about female assassins.”

“I used to study criminal psychology, and I was just interested in what made a, uh, a woman able to kill.”

“But why these specific cases?”

She began to stutter. “I - I - was made aware-”

“Say it.”

Dany took a deep breath. “I believe that there is a prolific female assassin working internationally targeting influential people. She doesn’t have a signature, like a lot of assassins, but she certainly has style, and I don’t know who or what is behind her but it just...intrigued me. And apparently that either means I’m getting ahead of myself or that I’m delusional, but I don’t care. I mean, it’s not even my job to care about this sort of thing anymore, but I do care. About her.”

The words felt so good rolling off her tongue. She had been doing this for months, and not once had she been able to talk about it to anyone else. 

Best of all, Catelyn actually looked interested. Not interested: captivated.

The waiter slammed down two cappuccino cups filled to the brim with straight espresso. 

“Thank you,” Dany said. 

“...Can I show you something?”

Dany wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when Catelyn asked her if she could show her something, but it certainly wasn’t an empty room in an abandoned building with what looked like three students sat around on laptops, eating various snacks and looking completely bored. 

That, and a huge display on the far wall, with a map of the Seven Kingdoms, various pictures and sketches, many of which looked very familiar to Dany from her own research, tied together with red thread.

“Nice murderboard,” she said breathlessly. “It’s like the inside of my brain on a wall.”

“Anything that might lend itself to the theory ends up on here,” Catelyn said. 

“I made it myself,” the brown-haired girl said. 

“Arya! _We_ made it.” 

The girl - Arya - rolled her eyes. “You decorated it, Sansa. I compiled all the evidence.”

“Shh!” Catelyn pressed a finger to her lips, and the two girls shut up. The boy, who looked slightly older than them, looked up from his screen. 

“Anyway. This is Daenerys, from MI5. Daenerys, this is Arya, Sansa, and Robb, my...team, who keep tabs where I need them kept.”

Dany looked over Sansa’s red hair. Robb’s blue eyes. The quirk of Arya’s lips. 

She glanced back at Catelyn. _Hold on._

“...Are these your children?”

“Come back in a few hours and the answer is yes,” Arya said. “But for now, we’re an international team of hackers.”

Robb chuckled and ate another biscuit. “Arya’s the hacker. Sansa and I just sort of hang out and talk shit.”

“Language!” Sansa said. 

“So you’ve got this...army of Starklings, and-”

Robb and Sansa snorted in unison. 

“Starklings?” Arya said. “Oh, we’re definitely rebranding.”

“Did we have a brand in the first place?” 

“Branding, then.”

“Arya, how old are you?” Dany suddenly asked.

“Fifteen?” 

“And don’t you...have school, or…”

Arya looked completely confused for a second. “Oh. No. This isn’t, like, a full time thing. We’re only here right now because Catelyn wanted us to meet you. We just sort of help out where we can.”

“Oh.”

“Which,” Catelyn said, “is why I need your help, Daenerys.”

She walked over to the murderboard, and skated her eyes over it. The killings in Duskendale - so that had been connected, then, the politician suddenly choking to death on a first-class train and poison being found in his system when he hadn’t eaten in hours. Sketches of various women, blonde-haired and sharp-cheekboned - this was the assassin, Dany realised. A dozen approximations of _her._

She must have been exceedingly pretty. While the sketches weren’t always consistent, varying in eye colour, hair length, and facial features, they were all very beautiful. 

“And you’re not supposed to be looking into this either?” Dany asked. 

“I tried to bring it up at MI6,” Catelyn said, “but there was a lack of enthusiasm for it.”

“If Daenerys says yes, can we go?” Robb asked. 

“Do you have somewhere to be or something?” Sansa scoffed. 

“Actually, I have a date.” 

Arya scoffed. “Yeah, and I’m the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Why me?” Dany asked. “Aren’t there more qualified people?”

“Your research speaks for itself,” Catelyn said. “You’re intuitive, ambitious, and you make good suggestions.”

She beamed. “Thank you.”

“And you’ve been fired, so no one cares about what you do next. I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

“Thanks, I think?”

“There’s not much money, I’m afraid.”

Arya looked up from her laptop. “You’re paying her?”

“This will be a full-time job for her,” Catelyn said. “For you three, it’s basically an after-school club.”

“I happen to be at university,” Robb said. 

“Anyway. There’s no ladder to climb, it’s all unofficial.” Catelyn raised her eyebrows at Dany. “Are you in?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find her. She’s on a payroll, there’s a pattern, we just haven’t figured it out yet. But I think you can.” She gestured at the Starklings. “We’ve been gathering evidence, but now we need people to put it all together. For whom this isn’t just an after school club.”

“People?” 

“You can have two,” Catelyn said. “I’d recommend people you trust.”

She looked around the cramped room, the seats already filled by her kids. “And relatively small ones.”

_

“Cersei!”

Cersei gave what had to be the most dramatic eye roll in modern history. It was nice to be back at her King’s Landing base, for familiarity if not anything else, but she’d forgotten that that came with her rather annoying neighbours. 

“Osney,” she said, turning around slowly so her smile would have time to cultivate naturally. “What are you doing?” 

He was rummaging through his rubbish, and looked like he had been doing so for quite some time. 

“Oh, uh...I couldn’t find the TV remote. I might have dumped it in the…” He frowned as she walked closer. “Seven hells. Did you get in a fight?” 

“Do I look like the sort of person who would get in a fight?” 

“No! No. It’s just you have a black eye.”

 _Oh._ “These things happen.”

She would have to cover that up with makeup once she got inside. 

“Good luck finding that remote.” She turned and walked up the stairs, not wanting to engage with the irritating man anymore. 

He was obviously in love with her, she thought with a smirk. Most people were, but especially him. 

She tossed the door to her apartment open to see - 

“Hello.”

“Qyburn, what the fuck are you doing in my flat?”

He was sitting on her counter and drinking a cup of tea. _He’s been here long enough to make tea?_

“Do you want me to take a look at that eye?” He set his teacup down. “I’m a doctor, you know.”

She sighed, and set her handbag down. “I’ll cover it up. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

He sighed. “Cersei, I just want you to know that I only have your best interests at heart-”

“I’m not going to kill you, Qyburn. Well.” She made a face. “Not unless I get really bored.”

“I want you to get assessed again.”

 _Hmm._ She tapped her finger to her chin, mock-thoughtfully. “No.” 

She began to walk towards her bathroom - she needed a bath after the debacle last night, she had decided, feeling rather grimy after all the running and travelling.

“Cersei, you can’t just-”

She stopped in her tracks to throw a particularly cutting glare at Qyburn. “Watch me.”

“Dragonstone was a mess-”

She rolled her eyes. “Did I or did I not get the job done?”

“It was supposed to look like suicide.” 

“Didn’t it?” 

She knew it didn’t. If she was honest, she hadn’t quite had the time to make it look like a suicide. And once the nurses and doctors had seen her in there, they obviously had to die too. So the hospital room had ended up looking like the inside of a slaughterhouse, but had she or had she not managed to kill Joyeuse Erenford?

“Cersei, what’s going on?”

“Well, I’m currently staying in a rather lovely King’s Landing apartment, but a man who is supposed to be my friend is getting on every last one of my nerves-”

“I’m being serious.” He tilted his head. “Are you having...hesitations?”

She scoffed. “Please. I’ve been doing this for years now. If I was suddenly going to develop a moral compass and a bleeding heart for my victims, I would have done it already.”

“I know you have a history of-”

“A history of what?” 

Qyburn cast his eyes down.

“No, tell me, Qyburn.” She put her hands on her hips. “What is it, exactly, that I have a history of?”

“Emotional instability. You know-"

“If you don’t shut the fuck up right now, I swear to the gods you will find yourself with a slit throat and your organs sold on the black market for the pennies they’re probably worth.”

He just raised his eyebrows as if to say _you’re only proving my point._ It was far from the worst thing she’d said to him, and she didn’t really mean it. She even liked Qyburn on certain days of the week, and probably wouldn’t actually kill him unless she was told to. But sometimes her words didn’t end up reflecting her feelings. 

“I’m not sending you on another job until you get assessed.”

“Fine.” She shot him a scowl. 

“Don’t look at me like that. We’re all worried about you, Cersei.”

“You make it sound like a happy family.”

“Isn’t it?”

_I wouldn’t know._

She had decided, in a moment of theatrical pettiness, to wear her most dramatic black evening dress, with the caped sleeves and a silk hemline that trailed behind her as she walked. It looked more like something a Disney villain or evil queen would wear, and she usually only wore it at home in her apartment to dramatically stare out the window and plan her next kill. 

_If these fuckers are going to accuse me of being sloppy,_ she thought, _I’ll remind them exactly who I am._

Qyburn only rolled his eyes as she walked in. 

She had considered having a speaker blasting _The Imperial March_ as she made her entrance, but had deemed that a tad too dramatic, and an idea to save for another time. 

“Please, sit down,” her assessor, Doctor Pycelle, said, and she complied, dramatically smoothing down the black silk. “Thank you for coming. And for making, uh, such an effort.” 

She smirked. 

He flipped a page on his clipboard, and began scrawling something with a pen. “How do you feel about the people you work for?”

“They put money in my pocket and give me a job I like. You know what they say. If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

“Do you have any interest in why you are asked to do what you do?” 

_Often._ “Not really,” Cersei said. 

“There are concerns about your state of mind. Have you been feeling any...anxiety, or stress, or…”

“Not particularly.” _Of course I have._

“When was the last time you worked?” 

“Yesterday.”

“Was it a successful mission?”

“Of course,” she said, as if to assume anything else would be offensive. “I shot him twice in the heart and watched the spark drain from his eyes.” 

She gave a little satisfied smile at the end of that, which resulted in Pycelle looking rather frightened. 

“Did you talk to him?” 

“A little. He was mostly running. Screaming, and running.”

Qyburn turned towards Pycelle. “I’ve been concerned that she’s losing her edge a little. Can you think of any reason for that?” 

Cersei could certainly think of a few reasons. She had been completely restless, lately, drinking more and more just so she could catch a wink of sleep. She couldn’t quite put her finger on _why,_ but that feeling had been eating her up for a long time, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t quite shake it. On official records, she had been labelled as a psychopath and a narcissist, which suited her employers perfectly fine, but she suspected that wasn’t quite the right diagnosis. 

Of course, she’d never told her psychiatrists that, because it might be a display of weakness, which she just couldn’t have, especially in her career. So she kept her mouth shut, and allowed the cold feeling of always being watched to fester, untreated, at the back of her mind. Sometimes it kept her sharp and stopped her from getting caught, and sometimes it meant that she couldn’t sleep or eat or talk to anyone. But on the other hand, sometimes her narcissism took over, lifting her high for weeks and weeks, making her feel as though she was above everyone and every _thing,_ only to come crashing down immediately after and feeling like she’d just been hit by a bus.

Again. Weakness. Not to mention endless yo-yoing between _everyone’s in love with me_ and _everyone is literally trying to kill me,_ which lead to some rather inconsistent and sloppy work. 

So she’d lied to her assessors, said everything she could to get herself labelled a straight-up psychopath to quell suspicion about her mental state. If they thought she was completely cold and detached, they would never suspect the grief she still held for her children, the way their faces haunted her at night, or the terrible memories from her childhood she kept replaying in her mind. 

Manipulating her doctors into thinking that she was more manipulative than she actually was didn’t speak too well for her character, but it got them off her trail, and motivated them to stay in her good books. Until now. 

Hence the evil queen dress, and the smirking, and the theatrics. 

“I’m not sure,” Pycelle said. “Let me try something.” 

He picked up a stack of photographs and began to show them to Cersei - _predictable_ , she thought. 

“Can you tell me what you see here?” 

It was an image of a man being hung while two soldiers looked on. 

“A rather unfortunate game of hangman,” she said coldly. 

“And here?”

“That’s a dead dog.”

“But what do you feel when you look at it?” 

“Am I supposed to feel something?” A stupid answer, but it was what they wanted to hear. “It’s a dog, and it’s dead. Boo hoo.”

Pycelle nodded. “That seems to be fine.”

“Actually,” Qyburn said, “I have one more question.” 

He handed Pycelle a slip of paper from his pocket. 

“Oh, um…” Pycelle read it slowly. “What does the name ‘Jaime’ mean to you?” 

She hadn’t been expecting that. Her expression faltered for a second, and that second cost her everything. 

“Nothing anymore,” she said defensively. 

“Who is he?” Pycelle asked. “An old...lover?”

“My brother,” Cersei said. _And lover._ “But he’s gone now. I’m never going to see him again, and good fucking riddance.”

“But you love him?”

 _That is one hell of a loaded question._ “Loved. Past tense.”

“And if you saw him again, what would you say?” 

She scoffed. “I would tell him to fuck off before I ripped his pretty little throat out.”

“What did he do?”

Another death glare, and he _shuddered_ at that. “Nothing that concerns you.”

Pycelle looked genuinely terrified. It was oddly satisfying. 

“...Right,” he said. “That’s all for today, I’m afraid.”

“What do you think?” Qyburn asked. 

“I’m afraid that I can’t sign her off.”  
  
  


“What in the name of every individual seventh hell were you two doing back there?” 

They were out on the streets of King’s Landing now, traffic flurrying past them. She was still in her black gown, and she was turning quite a number of heads because of it. 

Well, because of that and the shouting. 

“We were doing you a favour!” Qyburn insisted. “The security is too tight for you to do the job anyways.”

“And what about the one after that? Will I be able to do that one? Are you having me _fired_ because of a single fuck up?”

“You’re not being fired.”

“Then what’s happening? Let me do the job, Qyburn, come on. Tell them that I’m fine.”

She was getting dangerously close to begging now, and she did _not_ beg. 

“I’m worried about you, Cersei,” he said, sincerity in his eyes. “As both a colleague and a friend.”

“We’re friends now, are we?”

“When you’re not threatening to kill me, yes!”

“You’ve definitely threatened to kill me before, Qyburn.”

“I was joking!”

“So was I.”

“Halloween’s not for another month, love!”

A man from across the road yelled coarsely at her. 

_Oh, I would rip his throat out if we were anywhere else,_ she thought, balling her fists at her side. But they were out in the open, and she could not afford to get into any more trouble with the law that might get her in the system. 

So she just stared daggers at him, and he shrank back. 

She turned away, satisfied. 

“Anyway,” she said, trying to sound somewhat chipper. “You won’t let me do the job? Not at all?” 

He shook his head. “It’s too much of a risk, Cersei. Do the next one. Prove your inflated sense of self-worth then. But not right now.” 

She softened her gaze. “Are you really worried about me?”

He nodded. 

“Oh, Qyburn,” she said. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

She opened her arms. 

He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“In my line of work, you don’t end up having many friends. It’s nice to know someone cares about me.”

He shrugged, and went in for the hug. 

_Fucking idiot._

He didn’t notice as she slipped the postcard with the job information from his suit pocket into her dress. 

It was always good to have your dramatic evil-queen dresses made with pockets. That was something she’d learned over the years. 

He pulled away. “Your hugs are very tight.”

“I haven’t given one in a while.” If she was going for the sympathy angle, she may as well milk it. “I’m sure I can improve with practise.”

He nodded appreciatively. “Take the day off, alright? Do something...I don’t know. Something fun.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”

She elected to spend the rest of her day in her apartment, _Requiem in D Minor_ on full blast and the black ballgown still very much on. _Requiem in D Minor_ was always excellent for dramatic pacing, plotting, and the occasional consumption of a packet of crisps. 

She was rudely disturbed from her theatrics by a pertinent knock at the door. 

_It could be another bloody door-to-door salesman._

_...Or it could be another person trying to take a hit out on me._

The dagger up her sleeve would suffice nicely for either situation, and she opened the door with that in mind. 

“Arnica is the best thing for bruises.”

Osney Kettleback’s obnoxious, grinning face was staring up at her from the doorway. Reluctantly, she moved her hand away from the weapon. 

“Oh. Thank you, Osney.”

He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Nice, uh...dress? Are you going somewhere?”

“What? Oh…” She looked down at her dress, as if to say _this old thing?_ “Just enjoying a nice afternoon in.”

She reached quickly for the cream he’d offered her. 

“If you ever wanted to...talk to anyone, or…” He shook his head, clearly flustered. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I can handle myself, thank you.” 

She nodded in appreciation and slammed the door on him, the look of disappointment on his face seared into her vision. 

She slammed the cream down on the table. 

_Fuck it. I’ve got nothing better to do._

“Osney!”

She called after him down the corridor. 

He immediately whipped his head around. “Yes?”

“What are you doing, right now?”

“Cancelling all the plans I had.”

 _This should be interesting._ “We’re going out.”

He beamed, looking nervously excited. _Almost like a sad puppy._ “We are?”

“We are.”

“Okay!”

She did her best impression of a pleased smile - a rather good impression if she did say so herself. “Give me a moment to change.”

They’d ended up walking through the historical part of the city, past the bay and towards the ruins of the Red Keep, while Cersei ranted about her issues at work under the guise of being a perfumist cheated out of a job. 

“They can’t do that!” Osney said. 

“They have,” Cersei said nonchalantly. 

“You should go anyway! It’s your job, Cersei.”

She chuckled a little. “You are so passionate.”

“Of course I am! I’m an artist.”

 _Of course you are,_ she thought derisively. 

“I don’t know much about the perfume industry, but you cannot let people stand in your way. You need to show ambition. I don’t know you as well as I’d like to, but you seem like a very ambitious woman, and you have to prove the bastards wrong!”

“I do like proving people wrong,” she said thoughtfully. “Thank you, Osney. And thank you for keeping me company. I love my life, I really do, but it gets a little lonely sometimes.”

“You live alone?” 

“I do.”

“Do you have any family in K.L., or…”

“No. No, I have two brothers, gods know where they are now. We don’t talk, and our parents are dead, so…”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. When you get to my age, if you had a golden dragon for every estranged or dead family member, you’d be the richest person alive.”

“You’re not _that_ old. You’re beautiful. Not that you can’t be old and beautiful, because of course you can, but…” He pursed his lips, clearly embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s good to hear.”

They came to a stop a safe distance from the Keep. These days it was little more than a glorified tourist attraction, with queues of chattering students and families lining up to see the ruins and the makeshift museum inside. But for Cersei, just looking at the towering ruins made her feel something deep within her soul. A yearning, when she wasn’t sure what she actually yearned for. 

She smirked up at it, the lazy afternoon sun glowing down on her. 

“The Red Keep,” Osney said. 

_Observant._

“Do you like history?” he asked. “I’m something of a historian myself.”

“I like kings and queens,” she said. “Mostly queens.”

“Are you...something of a queen yourself?”

Her smile widened. “Exactly,” she said. 

“Do you want to go in?” 

“No,” she said. “I want to see your apartment.”

This had been a mistake. 

It was, quite frankly, the most boring sex she’d had in a long while. Not bad by most people’s standards, just...disappointing. But she wasn’t sure what she had expected from a man named _Osney Kettleblack._ A fucking made up name if ever there was one. 

She ended up on top of him, riding him as hard as she could just to get the affair over with so she could go back to her place and make her preparations for tomorrow’s job. 

She’d thought she would get some satisfaction out of this, but the second he’d started kissing her she’d known she was in for a disappointing ride - _a literal ride_ , she thought, and she allowed the laugh from that to transform into a pretend moan. And she hadn’t been wrong. 

He came, predictably, rather quickly, which was a relief. 

_Note to self: be more choosy when it comes to partners for casual sex. And lower your expectations._

“Did you come?”

She leaned down, and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “Not even close,” she muttered. 

“...Oh.”

“Was this your first time?” 

He looked incredibly offended. “No! I’ve been with lots of women.”

She climbed off him. “Maybe you owe them an apology card. Some flowers, perhaps.”

She hadn’t even removed her clothes, just her Louboutins and tights. Her black cashmere jumper and leather skirt were decidedly crumpled now, but perhaps she had known in foresight that it wouldn’t quite be worth getting naked for. 

Osney lay there, defeated, as she smoothed her clothes down. “For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Can I eat you out?” 

_Are you fucking kidding me?_ “No!”

He cast his eyes down in shame as she sorted herself out. 

But it would be a bad idea to let him go to waste, wouldn’t it?

If Qyburn had been here, he would have said ‘Oh, no, you’ve got that look on your face again. What are you up to?’

She turned around, a sympathetic smile manifesting on her face. 

“But there is something I think you can do for me. If, of course, you’d be willing.”

He nodded. “What is it?”

“How much do you know about perfume?”

“Like I said. Very little.”

“Perfect.”

“You make the perfume in your apartment?” Osney said, looking around with wide eyes. 

“Yes,” Cersei said. “Like I said, I’m very new to this. I think…I think I could go far.”

“I think you could, too.” He frowned at a painting on her wall. “This place is...really nice. Do you have a job, or…?”

“My father left me a lot of money when he died.” Partly true. “I miss him terribly, but not a day goes by that I don’t thank him for giving me the chance to do what I love.”

Not even slightly true. 

“Ah.” Osney sat down at her kitchen counter. “So-”

“Did I say you could sit down?” Cersei said, and he shot back up. 

“No. Sorry, I-”

“After giving me what has to be the most appalling sex I’ve had in a long time, the best you can do is respect my home, alright?” 

She was beginning to grow tired of the amiable facade, and it was slipping, but she couldn’t be bothered to pick it back up.

Besides, he was going to be dead soon, anyway, so she may as well enjoy being a bitch to him while his heart still beat in his chest.

“So,” she said, smiling brightly at him. He looked incredibly confused by her inconstant attitude. “I have a small bottle of the perfume right here.” 

She opened her kitchen cabinet and pulled it out. It was a beautiful decanter, one she’d picked up from a market in Storm’s End. 

“It’s supposed to be woody,” she said as she handed it to him. He examined it - he didn’t notice her stepping back, far back. “Vetiver, with notes of sandalwood and pine. Deep, and powerful, sensual but not quite feminine. Let me know what you think of it.”

He held it rather indelicately. “What do I…”

“Spray it on your wrist,” she said. “Let it settle. Then smell it. I know you’re not an expert, I just wanted to get another opinion.”

“Right,” he said. He rolled his sleeve up, and sprayed it, getting the nozzle far too close to his skin. 

She took another step back. 

“It smells…” He sniffed. “I’m sorry, I don’t smell anything.”

“Really?” She pretended to be disheartened. “Smell it again.”

He took another sniff. “I...sorry. Perhaps you forgot to-”

His words were cut off by a cough. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I-”

Another one. More violent, this time, and hacking, like he was trying to cough something up that wasn’t there. 

“No,” Cersei said as he continued to heave. “I think it’s exactly right the way it is.”

“What have you...” His voice rasped as he raised a shaky finger towards her. “You…”

“Thank you for spending the afternoon with me,” she crooned, her voice soft as ever as his eyes turned bloodshot. “It really has been...illuminating.”

He gripped the marble countertop as he began to collapse, still heaving into his sleeve. 

_ Perhaps I am a psychopath,  _ Cersei thought as he crumpled to the ground, and she smirked.  _ Would someone who wasn’t enjoy watching this happen?  _

She’d seen people’s eyes light up with sick satisfaction as their victims perished. Someone in the same line of work as her - Euron, it must have been - had told her it felt like an orgasm. Which was a weird fucking comparison to make, but she wouldn’t have expected anything less from that idiot. 

This wasn’t quite that, though, and she knew that because she’d felt it. When she’d watched Robert die, by her own hand, it had felt like a thousand universes coming into existence at once, all the years of pain and rage fading away before her eyes. 

This was just...pride. Appreciation of a job well done. 

He expelled one final, strangled breath before giving up entirely. 

“Oh,” Cersei cooed. “Poor Osney Kettleblack.” 

_ I’ll have to fucking cut him up and boil him down now,  _ she thought.  _ It’ll be too suspicious to dump him somewhere and blame it on a drug overdose. I’ll have to throw him in the sewers somewhere.  _

Still, it was nice to know that her perfume worked. Quickly, as well, and efficiently.

She opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves.  _ Thank you for your noble sacrifice, Osney.  _

-

“Daenerys.”

She was greeted by Varys the moment she stepped off the bus, a short way outside Catelyn’s office-cum-headquarters-cum-babysitting service.

“You showed up,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I may not always agree with you, Dany, but you’ve certainly piqued my interest.” He squinted at the unassuming building. “Although it doesn’t look as unusual as you promised.”

“I meant the inside,” she said. “And just you wait.”

Her phone pinged. 

“Oh, hold on…”

“Someone else joining us?” 

She looked up, and Missandei appeared right on cue, half-skipping down the road. 

“You’re kidding.” 

“All I had to say was Catelyn Tully Stark.”

“Dany!” Missandei said excitedly. “Varys. Quitting is literally everything I’ve been aiming for. I told you he’d agree to it.”

“Please. Let’s be professional.”

Varys frowned at her. “You asked Missandei first?”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

He exhaled. “Nothing. Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“You love that display, don’t you?” Varys said disparagingly. 

“Shush,” Dany said. “It’s beautiful. Sansa and Arya made it.”

He regarded the Stark girls with some confusion. “And...how old are you, exactly?”

“Fifteen,” Arya said, at the same time as Sansa said “Seventeen.”

“Seven hells. Don’t you have school?”

“It’s literally a Sunday,” Sansa said. 

“Does this count as child labour?” he asked.

“It’s more like a chore,” Robb said. “You know, unload the dishwasher, mow the lawn, hack into the mobile phone network to catch an uncatchable assassin.”

“...Anyway,” Dany said. “Susan Hill, found hanging in the ladies’ toilet in a Pentoshi airport. Gregor Forrester, a Northern diplomat, found killed in his hotel room in Duskendale.”

“Why a woman, for that one?”

“He had twenty-four hour security, and the only people who could enter his room were the maids,” Arya explained. 

Daenerys tapped another photograph. “Leyton Hightower, humanitarian aid. Killed at his anniversary party in Oldtown. Eyewitnesses say they saw a blonde woman going inside the house, and a kid said a blonde woman in a red dress was playing a game with him in the same room where Leyton was found murdered with an onyx ring.”

“So witnesses saw a woman wearing a dress and playing with children?”

“Varys, why do you have to be so contrarian all the time?” Missandei asked. “We’re just trying to piece this together.”

“I’m just being a realist. And neither wife nor child saw the murder happen.”

“What about the ring?”

“Men wear rings!”

“No one witnessed any of the other murders either,” Sansa noted. 

“Except for Joyeuse.”

“Well, she’s dead now, so we’re back to square one,” Missandei said resignedly. 

“Did forensics find anything about Joyeuse’s murder?” Dany asked. 

“They found a DNA profile,” Arya said, glancing at her laptop, “but no matches.”

“Any witnesses to that kill?” Varys asked. 

“No.”

“Any witnesses from the hospital at all?”

“They were all killed,” Daenerys said. 

“So nothing to implicate the same woman. Can you give me a single discernible motive for one person to have done all of this?”

She sighed in frustration. 

“I’m not trying to undermine your theory, but what if we’re making something out of nothing?” 

“I’d rather make something out of nothing than turn a blind eye to-”

“Daenerys, you can’t lead a team on assumptions. It’s not how it’s done!”

All three Stark children were glaring at him now over the tops of their laptops, clearly just as irritated as Dany was. 

“Is there a bathroom here?” she said exasperatedly. 

“I’ll show you,” Arya said, seemingly just as eager to get out of the cramped office room as she was. 

They came to a stop outside a worn, paint-peeling door. 

“It’s best to bring your own or it just disappears,” Arya said. 

“Your own-”

She pulled a full roll of toilet paper out of her bag. “How many sheets do you need?” 

Dany stared at the offending roll, not quite sure how to respond. “I’ll just...take the roll?”

“Sure. Can you give it back once you’re done, though?”

“Um...okay?”

She flashed her a smile. “Great. Have fun.”

She walked back down the corridor, combat boots skipping over the carpet. 

_Has my hair been a mess this whole time?_ She was greeted by her reflection the second she stepped into the stall, and she was quite frankly disappointed. 

Maybe it would be better to tie it up. 

She reached for the hair tie on her wrist, and -

_“Do you happen to have a hairband?”_

_“I might. Hold on…” She rummaged in her pocket. “Yes.”_

_She held it out to Dany and smiled._

Dany made furtive eye contact with herself in the mirror. 

_Wait a second. That could have been - that might be -_

The hair tie snapped. Again. 

All the images of the assassin they'd laid out on the murderboard began to blur together before her eyes, forming into someone real, someone she'd seen before, in a dingy bathroom just like this one. 

_Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear your feedback, thoughts, anything really.   
> Oh, and the black dress Cersei's wearing is [this](https://scontent.flhr4-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p640x640/86348657_1891821714296190_7104083728166551552_o.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_sid=e007fa&_nc_ohc=24x3xFt129EAX84PATc&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr4-1.fna&tp=6&oh=2fda6ed72c200d2499a1c0c8f522e330&oe=5FAF3B14) Linda Friesen dress. I saw it and instantly thought of her, so into the fic it went.


	3. I Don't Know What A Monkey Dick Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys and Varys clash over their pursuit of the mysterious assassin, and their suspicions turn to Petyr of all people. Cersei discovers that someone might be on her trail.

“Arya. Arya, Arya, Arya...oh, here’s your loo roll.” 

She dumped the toilet paper next to Arya’s laptop. 

“Arya. Can you get the names and photo IDs of every nurse working at the hospital that night? Whether they were on Joyeuse’s ward or not.”

“Uh, sure?” She immediately started typing. 

“What’s this for?” Missandei asked. 

_I’ve met her._ “There was a nurse who left the bathroom before I did. I thought maybe she could have seen something…” There was an empty seat in the far corner of the room. “Where did Varys go?”

“He left in a strop,” Missandei said. 

Dany threw her head back and sighed. "Not this again."

“Varys!”

She almost got hit by a bike running across the road as she called after him, catching sight of him across the narrow street. 

“Varys!”

He turned around and huffed. 

“I have supported you ever since I joined MI5, and this is how you repay me? By betraying me?”

“I am not betraying you,” he said stuffily. “I am getting chocolate.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.”

“You have low blood sugar?”

“I do.”

“Good. I thought you were just being a monkey dick about not being in charge.”

“I don’t know what a monkey dick is.”

“Similar to a dickswab. You seem to be familiar with those.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m adapting. But I’m only looking out for you.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

“I also have a funny way of being able to walk and think at the same time, and I’ve been thinking. You’re focusing too much on her. She is the lackey - you need to focus on who’s running her. She’s irrelevant.”

“She is completely relevant!” The words came out of her mouth far too loud, and a few passersby stopped to look at her. 

She sighed, and lowered her voice. “We have to ask what her motive is. Either they have something on her, or they’re controlling her, or-”

“Exactly! They! Who is they? It could be anyone.”

“If it was someone with enemies, they would have owned up to it. So we can rule out plain intimidation. There’s no political correlation, at least none that we can figure out-”

“And who is we? You and a motley crew of schoolgirl investigators-”

“Can you shut the fuck up and listen to my reasoning?” 

Her voice echoed through the underpass they were going through. A passing mother covered her daughter’s ears. 

Varys came to a stop and raised his eyebrows accusatorily at her. “I’m listening.”

“There are no trails. If they’re random, then fine, they’re random, you’re right. But to me that seems like the whole point. And if that’s the case, then someone’s plan is going really well, and all you seem to be doing is perpetuating that success. These people are powerful, and particular, and so far completely invisible, which means they’re probably everywhere. She is our only visible contact, and we have to use everything we know about her to get to them.”

“And what would that be?”

“She’s middle-aged, smart, fit, likely blonde-”

“It could be you, then. Allowing some margin of error for age.”

Dany rolled her eyes. “She brings a certain flair to her kills.”

“The ring was quite cool.”

“Either they trained her, or they found her - who knows, maybe she likes doing what she does?” She hadn’t realised she’d put this much thought into it until the words were coming out of her mouth. 

Varys looked at her for a few moments as if decoding her words. Then, he smiled. “That’s a good start, then.”

She tried not to beam, not wanting to give him that satisfaction. “Thank you. How far is the chocolate shop?” 

“Couple of roads down.”

“I’ll...just walk back to the office. Can you get me some Maltesers? And some stuff for the kids, they must be hungry by now.”

“Yes, boss.”

She chuckled. 

“Hello again, Starklings, Missandei.” She poked her head around the door light-heartedly, hopefully indicating that the tension had somewhat dissipated. 

“Someone’s chipper,” Missandei remarked. “Varys nowhere to be found?”

“He’s coming back with chocolate. For everyone.”

“Yesss,” Sansa said. 

“Missandei." Dany sat back down at her desk, reclining precariously in the cheap swivel chair. "Can you call Petyr and ask him for a drink tonight? I want to know more about the CCTV.”

Missandei glared at her in abject confusion. “Please tell me you have some other friend called Petyr whose last name isn’t Baelish.”

“Nope.”

She sighed. “Dany! He’s a creep. I don’t want to go for a drink with him.”

“Not a drink drink. I’ll come with you.”

“Can we come?” Arya asked, perking up from her laptop suddenly. 

“I will supply you with chocolate. I will not supply you with alcohol.”

“I happen to be twenty,” Robb protested. 

“And I happen to work for your mother. Speaking of, Arya, when do you think I can get those hospital IDs by?”

“This evening?”

“Great, thanks.”

“Don’t you have maths homework to do?” Sansa asked. 

“You’re right. You can do it for me,” Arya responded. 

“Arya, I barely even passed my maths GCSE.”

“Excellent, then it’ll look like I did it.”

Sansa huffed. 

“I have to say,” Dany said, “you lot are much more interesting than my usual coworkers. No offense, Missandei.”

“None taken.” Her phone pinged. “Oh, that was disturbingly easy. He’s already at the pub, apparently.”

“Wait." Sansa looked incredibly alarmed all of a sudden, her ice-blue eyes wide with disbelief. “Did you say Petyr Baelish?”

“Uh, yeah? You know him?” 

Sansa glanced at Arya, then at Robb, and the three of them burst out laughing. 

“What’s so funny?” 

“You were right about that, Missandei,” Robb said, “he is a creep.”

“He’s been in love with Mum since, like, forever,” Arya said. “He weirds me out. And I think he might be a nonce.”

“I thought that too!” Dany said. “It’s the moustache."

“No, oh my gods,” Missandei said. “I have to look him in the eye now.”

“I’ll catch you up in a bit,” Dany said, as Missandei put her jacket on. 

“If he punches me for leaving, it’s on your head,” she said. 

“If we find out anything about that CCTV, I will pay you so much money.” 

Missandei grinned. “You still owe me one.”

“And I will owe you even more now.”

“You’re lucky I love you.” With that, Missandei closed the door behind her, still looking unconvinced. 

“You think that’ll work?” Sansa said sceptically. 

“I hope so,” Daenerys sighed. “Is Petyr really...you know?”

“A nonce?” 

“No! In love with Catelyn.” 

“Yes,” all three of the Stark kids said at once. 

“I fucking knew it,” Dany muttered under her breath. 

“Oh!” Varys burst dramatically through the doors of the _Wolf & the Dragon _pub. “Petyr. What a surprise it is to see you here.”

Petyr looked up from his pint, eyes wide in disbelief. 

“What a coincidence,” Dany said. 

Missandei’s eyes were filled with relief. She’d been alone with him for fifteen minutes or so, and every miniscule feature of her expression was screaming _get me out of here._

“Well, this is rather embarrassing,” he said. “Perhaps you three should find a new pub, considering the unsavoury conditions we parted in.”

Dany shrugged. “I just wanted to apologise for calling you a dickswab. After you fired us.”

“Me too,” Varys said. “And I’m sorry about the whole pedophile thing.”

“You should be," Petyr said adamantly. "I've been in this profession for twenty years and I have never been insulted in such a way. Accusing me of being="

“I did not _accuse_ you of being one," Varys said calmly. "I simply said your moustache made you look like one."

He gave Petyr an infuriatingly placid look, and the irritation on Baelish's face brought immense satisfaction to Dany. 

Missandei let out a laugh, then quickly shut up as Petyr glared at her. 

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. 

“People are staring. Just tell me what you want and go.” 

“Mr Baelish,” Varys said, his tone still filled with quiet loathing, “did you actually see the CCTV?”

“What CCTV?”

“The, uh, Frey assassin,” Dany said, suddenly feeling a little less sure of herself. There was absolutely no guarantee that this was going to work, that they were going to get anything out of this. 

Petyr looked at her in disbelief. “Did you set this up?”

Daenerys cast her eyes even further down. _He’s not my boss anymore,_ she reminded herself. _I don’t answer to him._

“I just wanted to be really clear,” Missandei said, “I wasn’t asking you...you know. Out out.”

Did Petyr look...disappointed? 

“Gods, I’m an idiot,” he muttered. 

“Hold on.” Missandei gaped in disbelief. “Did you actually think-”

“No!” he said, suspiciously defensive. “I just thought that-”

“Oh my gods, Petyr, no I wasn’t-”

“You know what?” He glared at all of them. “This is ludicrous. That’s what this is. Absolutely ludicrous.”

“It’s just, I spoke to the police at the Twins and they said there was no CCTV.” Varys tilted his head accusingly. “So what was it that you watched?”

Petyr sustained eye contact with Varys for a few, silent moments. Daenerys looked between the two men, trying to figure out what on earth was going on in either of their heads. 

“You want to know the truth?” he finally said, his voice shaky. “Fine. Fine. I’ll tell you the truth. I made up the CCTV.”

“You WHAT?”

The entire pub came to a standstill as Daenerys’ voice came out as an unrestrained roar. All she could hear now was the clattering of cutlery dropping on plates and the sound of her heart beating in her head. 

“...You lied?” she seethed. Her voice was quiet: if she raised it any louder she might not be able to stop herself from yelling again. 

“It was not your investigation!” Petyr insisted. “And taking bets on people’s killers, that’s-”

Daenerys took a step towards him, and his eyes widened. 

“You lied about important evidence.”

“Dany,” Varys said warningly. She ignored him. 

“If we’d known there had been no CCTV, we could have found the killer already.”

“Could we?” Missandei muttered under her breath. 

“I was so sick and tired of you piping up with your...your theories,” Petyr hissed. “Any time there was a whiff of conspiracy, you stuck your nose right in-”

“So you think me sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong is more important than finding an actual murderer? Is that it, Mr Baelish?” 

Hot rage was seeping into her veins now, boiling her blood. “How dare you,” she said. “How fucking dare you.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it now,” Petyr said. He almost looked _smug._

“You’re fucking pathetic,” she seethed. “You know that?” 

“I can’t be doing with this,” Petyr said. “I cannot deal with this blatant disrespect-”

“What about disrespect to the dead?” 

“No,” he said, shaking his head. With that, he picked up his briefcase, and turned around. 

“Where are you going?” Missandei said. 

“To find a new pub,” he muttered, and walked towards the door. 

He stumbled, rather undignified, on the little step by the door, but he didn’t dare look back, which resulted in what wasn’t the most graceful exit Daenerys had ever seen. 

Her fists were still balled in anger. She allowed herself to release them, doing her best to calm herself down. 

“Well,” Missandei said. “All things considered, that went rather well.”

“Bastard,” Daenerys said. “I’ve never met a single man who was more of a slimeball than him.”

“Maybe not,” Varys said, putting a hand on her - evidently tense - shoulder. “But we got what we came for.”

“Yeah,” Daenerys said. “But now we’re back at square one. No CCTV, no evidence, no nothing.”

Varys and Missandei were both silent, not quite knowing how to respond to that. 

“I don’t know about you,” Varys said tentatively, “but I could do with a drink.”

“Oh, fuck yes.”

-

Cersei froze at the door to her apartment as she saw that, once again, Qyburn was sitting in her kitchen. He hadn’t even had the dignity to pull up a chair this time: he was perched on her kitchen counter, looking most out of place in his expensive suit all slumped over like that.

_Shit._ Although she had taken the red wig off, she was still dressed in the waitress uniform from the job she’d done. He had lied to her: the security had hardly been tight at all, and she’d managed to take out Falyse Stokeworth with a single whiff of perfume. 

It hadn’t been the most entertaining or glamorous of jobs, but she felt an incredible sense of vindication from doing it simply because she had been told not to. 

However, Qyburn didn’t seem too preoccupied with her outfit, at least not yet. He was dangling a ziplock bag in front of his eyes, looking at it in fascination. 

“Whose teeth are these?” he asked, not looking up from it. 

She set her handbag down cautiously at the door. “My neighbour’s?” 

“You killed your neighbour?”

“He was inching dangerously close to _romantic attachment_ territory.”

“Oh.” He opened the bag up, inspecting the grisly contents. “Can I keep them?”

“Um...sure?”

Qyburn could be very, very bemusing sometimes. Still, it wasn’t like Cersei needed the teeth for anything. 

What she did need was an explanation for what he was doing here, and how he had presumably found out about the job she had done. Because despite his apparent disinterest, he was obviously here for a reason. 

“You know, just because you have a key to my flat, doesn’t mean you can use it whenever you like. A simple knock will suffice.”

“You weren’t in. It seems like you were out having quite the time.”

She stared him down, not wanting to respond. 

“I do try to be nice to you, Cersei. But if you disobey me, I will have no choice but to halve your allowance.”

She scoffed derisively. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“You went behind my back. Behind _their_ back.”

“I was under the impression that there would be more security. And I got the job done, spectacularly, if I do say so myself. I’m not so sure what the problem is.”

“The problem is, Cersei, that you are acting like far too much of a wildcard.”

“Oh, please.” She stalked towards him, heels clacking on the tiled floor. “You lied to me just as much as I lied to you.” 

He scoffed, but she could see him shuffling away from her on the counter. “You seem to be under the impression that we work in an honest business.”

“That doesn’t mean,” she said, gritting her teeth, “that I appreciate lying.” 

“You just need to trust me-”

“No.” Lightning-fast, she pulled the ruby-encrusted dagger out of her sleeve and raised it to his chin. “You just need to trust me.”

There it was. Genuine fear in his eyes as she tilted his chin up with the sharp point. 

“You wouldn’t kill me,” he said, his voice strained. 

“Of course not,” she cooed. “At least, not tonight. I’ve just cleaned up two bodies, I hardly have the energy for three. And it is a _pain_ to wash the blood off these tiles, no matter how many times I do it. But, sometimes, I think you need reminding exactly who is in charge here.”

Qyburn laughed bitterly. “And you think that’s you.”

“We both know it is.”

He looked down at the offending weapon. “A golden dagger?”

“A family heirloom,” she said. “Of sorts.”

“You are so dramatic. It would seem, far too dramatic for our liking.”

“Really?”

“There have been...developments.”

“Developments?” Her grip on the weapon softened. “What kind of developments?”

“A woman in Dragonstone is leading a department just to find you.”

_Shit._ She pulled the dagger away completely, sheathing it back in her sleeve. 

“For how long?” 

“We don’t know. But it’s a closed operation, and we don’t know how much they know.”

Her hands were shaking again. She shoved them into the pockets of her skirt, doing her best not to show signs of weakness. 

“We will just have to be more subtle from now on.”

Maybe Qyburn was right. She had been a little too reckless lately, too confident in her abilities. She wasn’t unstoppable, and she couldn’t always afford to think that. 

“I can do subtle,” she said decisively. “But I can still work?”

“We can hardly afford to lose you now,” Qyburn said. 

She smirked a little, trying her best to regain her usual demeanour and hide the cold fear that was filling her. “It’ll be expensive,” she said. “You might want to think about doubling my allowance, not halving it.”

“I’ll have to take that up with a higher power.”

“I’m a valuable investment. Now can you please get out of my kitchen, I need a drink and _Sharp Objects_ is on tonight.”

Qyburn gracefully got down from the counter. “On a bit of a Gillian Flynn kick?”

“She’s amazing. And if Amy Adams doesn’t win the Emmy for it, I might have to slaughter everyone involved in making that decision.”

“That had better be a joke.”

“Of course.” She gave a simpering smile. 

He nodded, and began to walk away. 

“Wait!”

He turned around, brow deeply furrowed.

“What is it?”

“What’s her name? This woman.”

“Oh. Daenerys Targaryen.”

_Daenerys Targaryen._ She ran the name around in her head a little, toying with it, trying to conceptualise this strange roadblock of a woman. “That’s quite a mouthful.”

“I’ll say. If that’ll be all…”

“Yes. Get out now.”

“Goodnight to you too.”

He shut the door behind him. 

The second he was gone, Cersei raced over to her laptop and yanked it open. She frantically typed _Daenerys Targaryen_ into the search bar, and started scrolling through the countless social media profiles. 

Targaryen wasn’t such an uncommon name, especially not in Dragonstone, as it would seem from the tens of Instagram profiles that came up, but _Daenerys_ wasn’t one Cersei had heard before. 

She scrolled past a couple of irrelevant results before settling on an Instagram account with the handle @danytargaryen. It was private, which was annoying, and it might not have even been the woman she was looking for, but still - 

_No._

Cersei let out an audible gasp as she clicked on the page. 

Instantly, she knew that this was her. 

Because while the profile was private, she could still see her profile picture. And she immediately recognised the white-blonde hair, the violet eyes, the wide, bright smile. 

Because she’d seen it in a bathroom on Dragonstone just a few days ago. 

“I gave you my last fucking hairband,” she said through gritted teeth. “And now you’re trying to kill me. Ungrateful bitch.”

There was something a little too hopeful in Daenerys’ expression that made Cersei’s blood curdle. She looked so determined, so eager. _So eager to cast me down,_ she thought bitterly.

“Hello,” she said. “Hello again, then, Daenerys Targaryen.”

-

Dany blinked in disbelief, her cup of tea hanging dangerously off her shaking hand. 

Arya had emailed her the names and photographs of all the nurses working in the hospital that day, as Daenerys had asked her to do. She’d frantically clicked through all forty of them, then back again, then back and forth until she must have given herself a repetitive strain injury. 

None of them were the woman she’d seen in the hospital bathroom that day. 

How could she be so stupid? Even at the time, she’d toyed with the possibility that that was _her,_ but she’d dismissed herself for being irrational. 

She had been so close. But just not quick enough. 

Immediately, she picked up her phone. Some tea sloshed onto her blue work blouse, but she hardly noticed. 

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” she implored, as the phone rang into her ear. 

“One moment, Rickon, someone’s just phoning me...Dany?” 

She breathed a sigh of relief as Catelyn’s voice sounded into her ear. 

“Dany, I’m just putting my son to bed. Can this wait until tomorrow?”

“...I think I’ve met her.” 

She was glad Catelyn couldn’t see her face right then, because a wholly inappropriate, unsuppressable smirk manifested on her face, growing into a grin from ear to ear. 

“Met who?” She knew. Catelyn already knew who she meant, she must have done.

“ _Her.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! And for the feedback I've received so far - I wasn't expecting anyone at all to read this because of how rare the pairing is, but it seems that so far that's the appeal, so I'm glad some of you like that! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.


	4. Birthdays Are A Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys and Varys travel to Pyke when the murder of an Iron Islands colonel has a disturbing connection to Dany.

“Her hair is golden blonde, long, wavy. It was in this beautiful updo, I remember thinking no nurse would have such an intricate hairstyle. She was slim, a few inches taller than me, so maybe 5’5? 5’6? I’d say she was in her mid-to-late thirties, probably. She had thick, dark eyebrows, and high, sculpted cheekbones. Her eyes were...this brilliant green colour, and sort of haughty, like she was looking down on me. On all of us. She looked so regal, somehow, even in her slacks. Like she was above everything else in the world. And when she smiled, I _wanted_ her to smile at me. Something about her was so compelling, like making her happy was something I should have been proud of. She felt...untouchable.”

“Um…” The sketch artist looked up from his computer. “So is that, like, a square face, or an oval face?” 

Daenerys rolled her eyes. _For fuck’s sake._

“She sounds like quite the remarkable woman,” Varys muttered to her. 

“Believe me. She was.”

“I’m just not sure knowing how _regal_ and _compelling_ she is will help us catch her.” He raised his eyebrows in judgement. 

“Shut _up.”_

“Dany!”

“Oh!” She feigned a bright smile as Daario walked into their already cramped kitchen. “Morning. Do you want some scrambled eggs?”

“Uh...no, thanks.” He poured some cereal into a bowl, still for all the world looking half asleep. “I feel like I’ve hardly seen you, recently. I mean, we live together, but-”

“Yeah, I’m...sorry. It’s the job.”

“The new one?”

“Yeah.”

“And is it, like, you’d tell me but you’d have to kill me, or…”

“No! No.” She took another bite of her eggs - she’d put far too much salt in them. “It’s just a lot of researching, analysing, paperwork. Very boring. But, you know, it pays better, so.”

“And you’re not in any danger?”

She laughed a little too loudly. “Gods, no, You’ve been watching too many spy movies.”

She was a much better liar than she used to be, she realised. Or maybe that just came with practise. 

“You’re sure.”

“The absolute worst that could happen is that I would...I don’t know, get the shits at my computer from eating a bad sandwich. And hey!” She took a step towards the kitchen counter, hoping she seemed somewhat reassuring. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine. If anything, I need to worry about you - those kids can be brutal sometimes.”

“Oh, tell me about it. One boy hit me with a football yesterday. Though I don’t know what I expected becoming a PE teacher.”

“There you go. You’re in more danger than I am.”

Daario chuckled. “Maybe.”

They stood in silence for a while, not really looking at each other as they ate breakfast. It should have been awkward, but that was how they liked it most of the time: leaving each other to their own devices while grateful for the company. 

“Hey, Dany?” 

She looked up from her mug of coffee. “Yeah?”

“I was wondering, uh, if you-”

Her phone rang loudly, making them both jump. 

“Sorry!” she shouted. “Sorry. One second. I’ll - hello?”

“Daenerys?”

“Hi, Cat. Are you - hold on.” She lifted the phone away from her ear momentarily. “Sorry, it’s work,” she said to Daario. “See you later, yeah?” 

He nodded wordlessly. 

She hurried out of the room, already gathering up her handbag and leather jacket. “Sorry, what’s the problem?”

“Can you come to the office? There’s been a, uh, development.”

She all but grinned. Being involved in this had made her so much happier, which was maybe not the best sign considering that actual people were being murdered, but she finally felt like she had a purpose. She actually looked forwards to going to work, and her mind was whirring all the time. 

“I’m on my way.”

“I come bearing coffee!”

She nudged the office door open with her shoulder, holding two cup-holders worth of Starbucks in her hands. 

“Cat, I got you a double espresso, they wouldn’t let me get a quadruple one because health and safety, apparently. Sansa, I got you a hot chocolate, and Arya, I wasn’t sure what to get you so I just got an iced coffee. Can’t go wrong with an iced coffee. Varys, here’s your cappuccino…”

“Someone’s chipper this morning,” Varys remarked as she set the coffees down. “Did they slip cocaine in _your_ cappuccino?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Just…nice to have a lead, isn’t it? I read all about Falyse Stokeworth this morning, and Sansa, I think you’re going to have to put her on the board, because it was-”

“This isn’t about the Stokeworth case,” Catelyn said solemnly. 

“...Oh? Then-”

“There’s been another one,” Missandei said. “In Pyke.”

Dany raised her eyebrows. “Already?”

The sullen atmosphere in the room was suddenly glaring. Dany felt ashamed of herself, like she shouldn’t have been so excited when she first came in. 

These were real people’s lives. It wasn’t just some game, some big hypothetical. Actual lives were at stake. 

“His name was Alyn Orkwood,” Robb said. “Some colonel from Orkmont visiting the capital.”

Dany frowned. “We’re sure this was connected to _her?”_

“He was, uh, murdered in a dungeon.”

“...Like a sex dungeon?”

“Yeah.”

“Do we need to cover Arya’s ears?” Missandei asked.

“I’m literally sixteen,” Arya said, full of snark. 

“I thought you were fifteen?”

“Birthdays are a thing.”

“Oh,” Missandei said. “Happy belated birthday.”

“Thank you!”

“Anyway,” Robb said, “we think he was killed by the dominatrix he was a client of.”

“I hope this wasn’t on company time,” Varys said. “Those poor Iron Islands taxpayers.”

“The suspect is a Caucasian woman in her late thirties, who was apparently covering for another...you know.” Catelyn said. “So, I think it’s going on the board. I hope you’re not too swamped with homework, Sansa?”

“This is more important than my literature coursework, anyway,” she said. 

“Do we have any witnesses?” Daenerys asked.

“Just the one,” Missandei said. “The receptionist who signed her in as a temp.”

“Oh,” Arya said, “and the e-fit image came through.”

“Perfect timing,” Dany said. “Let’s send that over to Pyke and get her identified.”

Robb glanced uncomfortably at Catelyn, and Varys made awkward eye contact with Missandei. 

“Why are you all being weird?”

“She, uh, gave her name at the desk,” Catelyn said. 

“Okay, but wouldn’t it be a false name either way-”

“She said her name was Daenerys Targaryen.”

Her stomach plummeted. “...What the fuck?”

“My sentiment exactly,” Varys said. 

“Wh-” She glanced at Catelyn, then at Missandei, then Sansa, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. “Me? Me, Daenerys Targaryen?”

“We think so,” Sansa said. “It’s not a very common name.”

She looked deathly serious, like she was telling Daenerys that she had two weeks to live - which, she realised, might not be so far from the truth. 

“So, this woman, whoever she is, has my name? Which means-” Her eyes went to Catelyn again. “She knows who I am. She knows I’m trying to find her.”

“That does seem to be the case, yes,” Catelyn said. 

“Shit. Please, please don’t take me off the team."

Catelyn sighed. “I can’t take you off a team that doesn’t exist.”

“How could this have happened?” Daenerys asked. “How could she - how could anyone have known who I am?”

“We can’t do anything about that now,” Cat said. “The important thing is deciding what to do going forward. And…I think I know what that might entail.”

Daenerys blinked. “Oh?”

Catelyn inhaled sharply. “Either you’re going to like this a lot, or you’re really not going to like it at all.”

“What are you talking about?" 

“I think you should go to Pyke.” 

“Me go to Pyke?” She looked over her shoulder at everyone else in the office. “Me? Right after this assassin’s found out who I am?”

“If she knows who you are,” Catelyn said, her tone authoritative and fierce, “it means she or whoever she works for is making a plan of action. We need to start mobilising as well. If there was ever a sign to get out from behind our desks, it’s this, I’m sure of it.” 

Although the logical side of her brain was telling her it would probably be a bad idea, her gut instinct told her Catelyn was right. She usually was. 

And besides, this had clearly been an attempt to provoke her. They might be falling right into her trap, but who knew what would happen if they ignored her? If the woman wanted her to go to Pyke so badly, that’s exactly what she would do. 

“I can’t make you go,” Cat said. “But-”

“I’ll do it,” Dany said decisively. She saw Varys make a face in the corner of her vision.

“Take someone else, if you want. I can’t go with you, though. Being a single mother of five really puts a damper on the whole international spy thing.”

Dany frowned. “There’s only three-”

“Bran is in a wheelchair, and Rickon is eleven,” Robb explained. “Not that being in a wheelchair means that you can’t be a spy, but...he didn’t think it would be best for him.”

“And he’s literally fourteen-”

“Arya, you are _literally_ sixteen-”

“Shush!” Catelyn said, and that was that. 

“Missandei?” Dany said. “Do you want to come?”

“Come now?”

“Not now, but, uh, at the weekend?”

“Oh.” She gritted her teeth. “Sorry. Grey and I are going to Naath this weekend.”

“Naath?” Dany raised her eyebrows. “Is he meeting your parents?”

“Maybe.”

“Ooh. Good luck.”

She smiled demurely. "Thank you."

“Right.” Dany made a big show out of looking at everyone in the office. “That, uh, anyone hiding under there? Nope?” Her gaze settled on Varys. 

“I’m guessing you want me to come?” he said drily. 

“Yes! You’ve been to the Iron Islands before, haven’t you?”

“I’ve been to a lot of places, Daenerys. That doesn’t mean I have to accompany you.”

“Name one thing you’ll be doing this weekend if you don’t go.”

He rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright. But if I die…”

“No one is dying,” Catelyn said. 

“Except for all the dead people,” Sansa said. 

“Yes. Well. Aside from them.”

“What do you actually want us to do?” Varys asked. “I expect sight-seeing is out of the question.”

“We need to know what actually happened in that...place,” Catelyn said, one eye still on Arya. “Now that we have the ability to actually chase this woman up, I say we make a start on it. Besides, the Iron Islands are trying to cover up the death, and if it’s being covered up, that means there’s something to be uncovered.”

“So…” Dany said hesitantly. “You want us to-”

“I want you to uncover it.”

Despite how early the flight was and how exhausted she found herself, Daenerys was somehow buzzing with excitement as she packed her suitcase. 

Months and months of research and speculating and feeling like she was crazy were finally coming together right before her eyes, and regardless of the potential danger she couldn’t help but be thrilled. But as she stuffed her clothes into her bag, she couldn’t help but feel like she was forgetting something, like - 

“Dany?”

She squeezed her eyes shut as Daario’s voice cut through her excitement. Of course. She’d completely forgotten to tell her flatmate that she was leaving. 

He frowned. “Are you, uh, going somewhere?”

“Yeah. Pyke.”

“ _Pyke_?”

“Yeah. You know. The capital of the Iron Islands-”

“Yes, I know where Pyke is, thanks.”

Dany bit her lip anxiously. She didn’t know how she was going to play this one off without him getting suspicious. 

“I...it’s a work thing,” she said. “Really last minute. I was going to tell you, but-”

“No, it’s okay.” He looked awkward, nervous somehow, which wasn’t at all like him. “I actually came in here to talk to you about something, but I figure - I mean, if it’s a bad time-”

“What about?” Shit, was he beginning to suspect something? She’d told him she had a promotion at work, that she was doing some more in-depth stuff, but she hadn’t even slightly been honest about the specifics, because she didn’t want to endanger him. If he’d found some emails he wasn’t supposed to look at, or she’d left her files out, or… “Seriously, Daario, whatever it is, just tell me.”

“No, it’s alright. This is clearly bad timing, anyway, I should-”

“No, just say it. Please.” She really couldn’t have his unsaid words hanging over her all weekend. Otherwise she would be completely restless and unable to focus, and -

“I’m in love with you.”

“What the fuck?”

She immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. Shit, she hadn’t even slightly meant to respond like that. 

He immediately recoiled. “I told you I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just-”

“I’m in love with you too,” she said. 

There were times when Daenerys could be sure of her intelligence, times when she could say with absolute certainty that she knew what she was doing and had an endgame in sight. She was a planner, determined, structured. 

But this was not one of those times. Not even slightly. 

Because she couldn’t leave him with the thought that he was in love with someone who didn’t love him back. Not if she fucking _died_ on this trip _\- I’m not going to die, don’t be stupid, Dany_ \- or not if anything happened. That would be cruel, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. 

It would probably hurt his feelings more down the line to be dishonest with him, but she wasn’t thinking ahead right then. All she was aware of was that she had about ten minutes to get out of her flat to make it to the airport in time for the flight.

Daario’s eyes lit up in shock. “Really?”

“Yes, really!”

“Was it more than just sex to you?”

 _Of course not._ “Yes,” she breathed. 

Daario smiled breathlessly. “Wow. I never thought-”

“Listen,” she said urgently. “I’d love to discuss this, really, I would. But I’m going to miss my flight if I don’t leave now.”

His face fell. “Oh. Of course.”

They stood there, staring at each other for a few moments, neither of them sure what to do. 

Then Daenerys kissed him rather boringly on the lips, because she didn’t know how else to resolve that particular conversation. 

“I’ll call you,” he said, after he broke away. 

“Mm-hmm,” she responded, nodding rapidly. “I need to, uh-”

“Right. Well.”

“See you?”

“...Yeah.”

“The Iron Islands wouldn’t be my number one choice for a holiday,” Varys said, as they stared out of the plane window, “but that is a lovely view.”

He was right. While the Islands didn’t exactly have a very good reputation, and were notoriously hostile to mainland Seven Kingdomers, the sweeping shorelines and jagged rocks of Pyke did make for a rather breathtaking sight. If a little harsh. 

“Do you think it was an inside job?” Dany muttered. 

“What?”

“I mean, wouldn’t the most likely people to assassinate an Iron colonial with a penchant for fetish be the Iron Islanders themselves?” 

“Oh, naturally,” Varys said. “Which means you and I will have to be very careful.”

“I can do careful,” Dany said. “Careful is my middle name.”

“Your middle name is _stubborn._ We’ve had this conversation far too many times.”

Dany rolled her eyes. 

-

The car pulled up outside the cafe. 

An almost alarmingly bald man in a suit got out on one side, and for a moment Cersei’s heart sank. She hadn’t come. She wasn’t here. 

But then, a woman got out on the other side. White-blonde hair, a slightly dreary blouse-and-jeans combination, and striking purple eyes. 

She couldn’t _see_ the purple eyes, but she knew they were there. She’d seen this face before, in the dimly lit bathroom back in Dragonstone. 

_Hello, Daenerys,_ Cersei thought, as she raised her coffee to her lips. 

-

“Remind me how we got access to this actual crime scene?” Daenerys muttered to Varys as they walked down the stairs.

The interior of the place was strangely normal-looking, for a sex dungeon. Dany wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but for the most part it looked like a rather normal, if dull and dusty, office building. 

“I know someone who knows someone. Who knows someone.”

“You have friends in high places?”

“Oh, all sorts of places.”

“Places like this?”

He shrugged mysteriously. “I have to have some secrets.”

“All you have is secrets. Oh, shit, did we go past it?”

“Where did the receptionist say she was going to meet us?” 

“Room 21.”

Varys peered at the sign on the door nearest to him. “Yep, we’ve gone past it.”

“Damn it.” Dany made a sharp turn and started walking back up the stairs. 

“Would you like me to take your bag?” 

“...And they say chivalry is dead.”

“Room 21 - oh, here we go.”

Varys pushed the door open, and Dany couldn’t help but chuckle. The walls of the room were painted bright red, and lined with all kinds of strange contraptions that she didn’t even want to imagine the purpose of. 

“This is more like it,” she whispered to him suggestively. 

“It’s a tad cliche,” he said, disparaging as always. “Emilie, is it?” 

There was a woman sitting on a chair at the back, anxiously fidgeting with her hands. To be fair, she was waiting for them in the middle of a literal crime scene, where a man had been killed mere days before. She had every right to be unsettled. 

She looked up, and her expression immediately shifted. “Mr...ah…”

“Varys. Call me Varys.”

“Thank you so much for giving us access,” Dany said. “I’m Daenerys-”

Emilie raised her eyebrows. “You’re the actual Daenerys?”

“Yes. It’s all a little, uh...unusual.”

“No kidding. She signed in, then disappeared without a trace. I’d never seen her before, but I only work Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Let me guess. She had blonde hair, green eyes-”

“Oh, she wasn’t blonde. She was a brunette. But she did have green eyes.”

 _She must have been wearing a wig,_ Dany thought. “What did she look like, then?”

“I wish I’d gotten a better look at her. But she was in her...I don’t know, mid-to-late thirties?”

“Checks out,” Dany said. “What about her, uh, client?”

Emilie gestured towards the bed. “We found him a few hours later, lying here. He was tied up and blindfolded, and the cause of death was ruled asphyxiation. No one saw the suspect leave, but there are no other exits, so she must have gone out the front door.”

“Could she have climbed out of a window?” Dany offered. 

“We don’t have many windows here. Privacy and all that.”

“Damn.” Varys glanced at the door. “So she choked a man to death and walked out of here in plain sight?”

“Sounds like her,” Dany muttered. 

“Most of our clients are anonymous, so there were no other witnesses,” Emilie said. “It’s impossible, and it doesn’t bode well for us as an establishment.”

“Could we, uh, see the autopsy report?” Dany asked. 

Emilie gritted her teeth. “There’s another problem for us. One of the attaches ordered a second opinion.”

“A second opinion? He was choked to death. There’s no ambiguity there.”

“I can’t imagine the Iron Islands military being very happy with the first,” Varys deadpanned.

“Who is this attache, anyway?” Daenerys asked. 

“One Mr Harlaw. He’s very high ranking, but...I don’t know, he’s an odd character. I can send you his email, but I doubt he’ll reply.”

“No, please do. It’s worth a try.”

As Emilie whipped her phone out and started typing, Daenerys stared incredulously around the room. 

She had been in here, the assassin. Her hands must have touched the riding crop on the cabinet, the ropes at the side of the bed. They had graced Orkwood’s neck before she’d strangled him. He’d probably liked it, the warm caress of her fingers on him, and their squeezing, before it got too tight and he couldn’t scream or tap out or call for help, as she wrung the life from him, as easily as wrapping a hand around his neck -

“Dany?”

“Sorry,” she said, snapping down to reality. “I was just thinking.”

Varys gave her a disapproving look. “About?”

“...Can we head back above ground for a second? I need to make a call.”

“Go on, tell me,” Varys said, as he hauled their suitcases up onto the pavement. “What’s your grand plan?”

“There is no grand plan,” Dany said. “I just feel like the Iron Islands is trying to bury this case, is all.”

“That’s not what your expression was telling me back down there.”

“Shh.” She inwardly cringed at that remark, knowing that her face had betrayed her, likely told him she was thinking about more than just the political implications of the murder. “Can you look after my bag for a second?”

She whipped her phone out of her pocket and raised it to her ear. 

“Arya?” 

She heard a distinct huff on the other end of the line. “I’m in the loos, and I have to be back in History in a minute. This had better be important.”

“Are you bunking off school?”

“No, I’m in the _loos._ Not the same thing. What is it?”

“Right. If I give you someone’s email address, can you find out where they might be right now?”

“If their diary’s connected, then yes.”

“Great. I’ll send it to you.”

“Wait-”

Dany hung up and instantly forwarded the address to her. 

She turned back around, where Varys was now chatting to Emilie. 

“I’ll send the e-fit image over, alright?” he said. 

She nodded. “That should be okay. If anything turns up, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Thank you so much.” He turned back to Dany. “Any progress?”

“Arya’s finding Harlaw for us. Though I think she might be in the middle of a History lesson, I’m not sure.”

Varys sighed. “These things do happen when you rely on an angsty teenager for tech support.”

“Either way, she’s the best we’ve got, and…” 

Her phone vibrated, and she whipped it out of her pocket. 

“Got his location from his email. Sending it over now,” she read out. “That was fast. And weird. I’m not sure how she knows how to do that, but as long as it helps us I’m not complaining. Now…”

She turned behind her, instantly ready to get going and face the next part of this operation. She was on fire with determination now that they had Harlaw cornered, and…

“Varys?” she said cautiously. 

“Yes?”

“...Where’s my bag?”

The spot by the wall where she’d left it was distinctly empty now. 

“I told you to watch it!” she huffed. 

“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry. I can get you a new one-”

“No, it’s not your fault, it’s just - ugh, all my stuff was in there!” She rubbed her temple, once again feeling frustration build.

“Why did they take yours, but not mine?” Varys asked.

“Does that really matter?” 

“Considering that your name is currently at the centre of an international murder investigation, I’d say so.”

She didn’t move her gaze from the empty spot on the pavement. “...Fuck.”

“Fuck indeed.”

-

Cersei slammed the suitcase down on the bed the second she walked into her hotel room. 

She wasn’t quite sure _why_ she’d picked it up as she walked past. It wasn’t as if it was going to solve any of her problems or get rid of this insipid young woman. 

_I was so close to her. I could have reached out and touched her, snapped her neck right there in the street. But that would be sloppy, and I don’t do sloppy._

(She had certainly been sloppy with jobs before, but it wasn’t like she was going to admit that to herself.)

But it had been right there in front of her, and her hands had itched to take it, to claim some sort of power over the Targaryen girl. 

Immediately, she tore it open, still not quite sure of the logic behind her actions. She needed to know her, somehow. Understand her, _invade_ her belongings. 

“Ugh,” she scoffed, holding up a particularly unimpressive denim shirt, and peering down to see a even less impressive blue _Dragonstone University_ hoodie. She’d almost hoped more for her dress sense: she was such a pretty young woman, and it seemed like such a waste. 

Perhaps she should leave Daenerys some of her clothes, then: one of her black leather skirts, maybe, or her teal velvet suit. She might look rather nice in white, but Cersei didn’t own many white clothes... _perhaps I could buy her something, then, a little present, that would unsettle her, make her fear what I could do to her with it, tear herself up over a simple piece of cloth…_

It probably should have occurred to her that she was supposed to be occupied with killing her. But it didn’t, not right then. 

“Oh, this is nice,” she said to herself, pulling out a rather beautiful dragon necklace that was tucked into the side pocket of the case. It was silver, and entwined with what couldn’t possibly have been diamonds but looked rather like them - probably not that expensive, but the kind of jewellery that might look so to the untrained eye. It clashed with the rest of her rather unassuming work clothes, and gave Cersei some hope for the poor girl. 

She clasped the necklace around her own neck, and played with the pendant thoughtfully. 

Cersei had never been particularly good at identifying her feelings, but some strange electricity hummed in her ribcage as she caressed the cool metal, and Daenerys’ face flashed before her eyes. She could remember it more clearly now, her perfect eyebrows, her violet eyes - who had _purple eyes?_ \- the soft determination hidden behind them…

Something like hatred curled within her. (Or maybe it wasn’t that. She didn’t quite know.)

“That’s new.”

She snapped her head up to see Qyburn standing in the doorway of her hotel room. 

_At least I expected him this time,_ she thought bitterly.

“It’s nothing,” she said, tucking it under the maroon silk of her blouse. 

“Is there something on your mind, Cersei?”

“Do you ever see someone and think, that person doesn’t belong here? Just because they’re so...ethereally beautiful that you think they should be in a...a Renaissance painting or a statue in a museum or something, not in a dingy poorly-lit bathroom right in front of you, and it makes you want to wrap your hands around their neck and throttle them to death?” She wasn’t sure where those words had come from, but they were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and like it or not, they were _true._

“Discovered your own reflection again, have you?” 

She scowled. “You’re not helping.”

“I’m not joking, little miss ‘I fell in love with my own twin brother _narcissistic personality disorder_ ’-”

“I did not _fall in love_ with my own twin brother,” Cersei said, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I had a sexual relationship with him, and three children. But I’m completely incapable of love.” She wanted nothing more than to avert her eyes, hide the emotions that were flooding to the surface all of a sudden, but realised that would make her look even more suspicious. So she held his gaze and tried to inject some uncaring coldness into her eyes. “Everyone knows that.”

“Did Jaime?”

She grimaced. “I’m sure he did. But what he wanted was always irrelevant, wasn’t it?”

“If...you say so. But what’s all this about attractive people in bathrooms?”

“Oh, nothing important.”

“Important enough for you to give me a dramatic monologue about it?”

“My monologues aren’t _for_ you.” She leaned back down into the suitcase and began to rummage through it once more. “You should know that by now.”

“What are you up to, Cersei?”

She raised her eyebrows innocently as if to say _who, me?_ “I’m not up to anything. Just enjoying Pyke. I haven’t been here since I was a teenager-”

“I booked you to stay here for one night. I don’t know what you think you’re doing hanging around. But since you’re already here…”

“Perhaps I should be the one asking you what you’re up to?”

“I have a job for you.” He stepped a little closer to her. “Off the record.”

“Oh, no,” she said sarcastically. “Off the record? That would be breaking the rules, I don’t know about that-”

“Cersei,” he said sternly. “You know that woman, Daenys Targaryen-”

“Daenerys.”

“She’s here.”

She faked genuine surprise, allowing her breath to quiver gently. “Seriously?”

“She is investigating your work.”

“I know that, but - right now?”

“I don’t know what you expected, using her name like that.” He sat down on the edge of her bed, which would have been perfectly acceptable if he hadn’t peered into the suitcase. “These don’t look like you.” 

Cersei slammed the lid shut. “Not the point. What’s this off-the-record job, then?”

“I want you to watch her. I need to know who she meets. This is me asking you, not them, just me.”

“Is this a test of my loyalty?” 

“We’re all well aware that you’re about as loyal as a snake. Like I said. For me. Find out everything you can about her.”

 _She grew up in Pentos, but went to university in Dragonstone. She’s twenty-five years old. Her parents and brother are both dead. She has terrible taste in clothes, but excellent taste in jewellery. She may or may not be single._ Cersei already knew plenty about Daenerys, had found out quite a bit from late-night insomnia-induced stalking sessions and careful observations. 

“I’ll do my best,” she said.

“Don’t do anything untowards.”

“Of course not,” she said, pouring honesty into her voice. “I know I don’t always take things as seriously as I should, but I understand the gravity of the situation here, Qyburn. Promise.”

He gave a little half-smile. “I can only hope so.”

It was a shame, really, that Qyburn was the one who didn’t understand the situation. But he was right about one thing: she _was_ about as loyal as a snake.

Not that she’d met any outstandingly disloyal snakes in her time, but she could imagine how she might compare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback as always!


	5. Come Along Then, My Sexy Spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys takes up an Iron Islands official on an offer in the hopes of receiving information about the murder. Cersei takes matters into her own hands.

“He asked you to _what?”_

Missandei’s voice came through the speakers of her laptop so loud that it made an awful screeching sound. Dany cringed - the walls of the hotel were thin and decrepit, and the people in the room next to her had surely heard that. 

“He asked me to have dinner with him,” Daenerys said. 

“So this hotshot Iron Islands colonel won’t talk to you about the autopsy unless you go out with him?”

“I know!” Daenerys threw up her hands in frustration. “I feel like I’m selling myself.”

“It does mean you get to be a sexy spy, though,” Missandei said. 

“Please,” Dany scoffed. “We’ve always been sexy spies. Like Charlie’s Angels if there were two of them.”

“Varys can be the third.”

Daenerys threw her head back and laughed at that image, desperately needing some comic relief after the day she’d had. “Oh, gods, that is hilarious. Can you imagine?” 

“In the leather catsuit and everything.” Missandei squinted at Daenerys. “Is that a new dress you’re wearing?”

“Oh!” Dany shuffled forwards on the scratchy bed covers to show her better. “My luggage went missing, so I bought this. It’s kind of weird, actually, I couldn’t find one that suited me, and I came out of the dressing room and someone had put it on the rack. It was like a miracle or something, I don’t know.”

“It’s cute,” Missandei said appreciatively. “That turquoise colour really suits you.”

“Oh, shit, I almost forgot to ask. How did Grey meeting your parents go?”

“Surprisingly well,” Missandei said. “I honestly didn’t think he would get on with my dad, but they seem to really like each other. They’re downstairs chatting now - I said I was just going to the loo, I should probably head back down now.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you away from them,” Dany said. “ I’ve got to get on, anyway. Keep me posted on how it goes with your family.”

“Good luck on your date from hell.”

“Can’t be any worse than you and Petyr.”

Missandei grimaced. “Oh, don’t even remind me.”

“Love you. See you on the other side!” 

Daenerys waved cheerily and hung up the call. 

“What’s all this about me in a leather catsuit?”

“Varys!” Daenerys whipped her head around to see him coming out of the bathroom. “You scared the shit out of me. Were you listening to all of that?” 

“I caught some of it when I was getting out of the shower.” He went to sit down next to her on the bed, in his comically fluffy dressing gown. “You and Missandei are good friends, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I feel like a lot of people think we’re just work mates, but it’s more than that. It’s like you and me. We’re friends.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Varys chuckled. “Us sexy spies have to stick together.”

Daenerys whacked him lightly on the arm. “Watch it.”

“You do look rather lovely, though. I hope that dress didn’t cost too much.”

“It was worth it,” Daenerys said. “It’s so much nicer than all the shit I lost in my suitcase, anyway. I need to stop dressing like an old maths teacher.”

“You don’t dress like any kind of teacher,” Varys said, rolling his eyes. “And if our friend Mr Harlaw wants to go on a date with a beautiful young woman in exchange for information, you’re definitely playing up our side of the bargain.”

Daenerys hesitated for a moment. “Are you coming onto me?”

Varys looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “Gods, no!”

“Oh, thank the gods. I thought-”

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said. 

“No, no, you didn’t. I was just checking. I mean, the last thing we need is for things to be awkward between us.”

“I don’t think about you like that at all, Dany,” Varys said reassuringly, and Daenerys knew he was telling the truth. “I admire you a lot, but I wouldn’t want to…” He wrinkled up his nose at the thought of it. “You know.”

“Do you think about any women like that? I mean, I hardly know anything about your love life.”

“I don’t have a love life,” Varys said. “And no, I don’t. Or men, come to think of it. Or anyone.”

“So, you’re...asexual?”

“Hmm.” Varys pulled himself up onto the bed, huddling over into a more comfortable chatting position. “I’m not sure if that’s exactly the right word. I just don’t tend to be a...I don’t know. Maybe I should look into it.”

“Maybe.” She shuffled up too, doing her best to recline on the bed without crumpling her gauzy dress. 

“What about you? Ever been interested in women?”

Daenerys was _so_ glad he’d asked her about that, and not if she was in a relationship. She really didn’t want to think about what she’d done to poor Daario.

She shrugged. “I prefer not to put a label on my sexuality, but a few times.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Um…” She tried to think back. “This girl back in Pentos who I went to school with. There were a few at uni, some just hookups, some more serious.”

“What about ones with brilliant green eyes and compelling smiles?” He raised his eyebrows at her. 

Dany stared blankly at him for a second. “Her?”

“Yes, _her_.”

“She’s a psychopathic murderer, of course I’m not interested in her.”

“Some people are into that sort of thing,” he said defensively. 

“Maybe on TV.” She picked up her pocket mirror and started touching up her makeup. “But not real-life murderers. That kind of crosses a line.”

“Still, you seemed to be quite interested in her. Impressed, even.”

She paused mid-blot. “Of course I am,” she said. “It’s my job.”

She tried to ignore that his words were hitting just a little bit too close to home. Because she _was_ fascinated by this strange, untouchable woman, and for those minutes they’d been in the bathroom together she had been incredibly attractive, and -

What the hell was she _thinking?_ Of course she wasn’t attractive, she had killed dozens of people and would probably do the same to Daenerys if she had the chance. 

_But she did have the chance, and I’m still here…_

“I’d better get going,” Daenerys said suddenly, springing off the bed. “He said to meet him at seven.”

“Of course,” Varys said, getting up too.

“Where are you going?”

“To a bar. I’ll call you at nine, get you out of there.”

“A _bar?”_ She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “What will you be doing there?”

“Meeting a few friends. I do have friends other than you, despite what you might think.”

“ _Varys,”_ she said playfully. “You know how to make a girl jealous.”

“Shh. Do you want me to walk you to the train?”

“Oh, please. Whoever designed the railway in this city did it specifically to spite me, I have no idea where I’m going.”

He extended his arm gentlemanly. “Come along, then, my sexy spy.”

Dany rolled her eyes. “Shut _up.”_

_

Cersei breezed through the train station, the details of Daenerys’ schedule firmly rooted in her mind. 

It had been a particular stroke of genius to put a listening device into Daenerys’ miracle dress, allowing her to overhear every word she said. She’d heard perhaps _more_ than she would have liked, but that was an entirely necessary sacrifice for her plan to go ahead.

She’d put on her favourite three-piece red velvet suit: after all, she was going on a date. 

Just not her own date. 

As she caught sight of Daenerys Targaryen out of the corner of her eye, she tucked herself inconspicuously into the ticket machine. 

What she’d said to Qyburn had been right. She was ethereally beautiful, and the shimmery turquoise dress she’d specially picked out did make her look even more like a goddess. 

And Cersei _did_ want to wrap her hands around her pretty throat and choke her to death. But that would have to wait for another time. 

She kept pretending to fiddle with the machine as Daenerys chatted to her friend - Varys, it must have been, with the bald head and the stuffy voice. She couldn’t hear them anymore, as the audio feed only connected through her laptop, but as they talked she couldn’t help but think back to what they’d said in their room, how they’d joked about Daenerys being attracted to her. 

The idea was amusing to Cersei, certainly. Of course, she suspected that most people were at least somewhat attracted to her, so she could hardly blame poor Daenerys. No - Dany, Varys had called her. Just like her Instagram handle. 

_Dany._ It felt familiar, amiable. She liked how it sounded in her head. 

But hearing that she was impressed by her had given Cersei a rush of power like no other. And the description of her _brilliant green eyes_ and _compelling smile_ had a similar effect.

_I’m already a narcissist, Dany. Don’t go encouraging me._

The train rolled in, and Varys began to walk away. Once he’d passed her, Cersei went towards the edge of the platform. 

_I’ll get off at the same station as her, but the risk of her recognising me is too high._

The doors opened, and she went towards the carriage. 

_I could wait around the area, and then follow her again at nine -_

She suppressed a shriek of surprise as a strong hand caught hers. 

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said. 

Oh, she was going to fucking kill this man. It was _Varys._

“Is this the train that connects to Saltcliffe? I’m hopelessly lost, I’m not from around here, you see.”

The doors shut, and the train went away. 

“No,” she said, putting on her best polite smile. “This is the Pyke underground train. You want Platform 3 for the channel trains.”

“Oh,” he said. “My mistake.”

_You know who I am,_ she thought bitterly. _And you know damn well I know who you are._

But neither of them could say that out loud. 

“Thank you,” he said, nodding politely. “Platform three, then?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, and gave her a friendly wave as he walked away. “Sorry about the train.”

“No worries,” she said brightly. “There’s another one in five minutes.”

She counted down from ten as he left, giving him just enough space to walk away. She knew he had no intention of going to that platform, of course, and was probably heading to where Daenerys was to warn her. 

Which meant, of course, that she had to follow him there.

Trailing one hand delicately on the railing, she climbed her way up the stairs and out to the dim, muted light of the city. 

She’d made it halfway to where Daenerys was supposed to be when she realised that the insufferable bald man had turned the tables on her, and that she was now the one being followed. 

If she hadn’t been planning to kill him before, she definitely was now. The rubies on her golden dagger winked at her from beneath her crisp white sleeve. 

If he wanted to follow her, then she would simply have to lead him where she wanted him. 

It was getting darker, now, and the bright fluorescent lights of the city streets were becoming more and more glaring as chattering groups of mildly intoxicated people began to fill the narrow streets, making her way more and more crowded. 

It would be easy to lose him, now, but that wasn’t what she wanted. No, she needed to lure him further in, keep him pursuing her thinking she was trying to evade him. 

She picked up her step and glanced nervously behind her, but not far enough to actually catch sight of him. 

She needed to take him somewhere crowded and noisy. Somewhere it would _hurt,_ where no one would notice he was gone until it was too late. 

She smirked to herself. _I know exactly the place._

_

The restaurant Mr Harlaw had asked her to was almost sickeningly fancy. The silk curtains alone looked like they were worth more than her entire life, as did the glass chandeliers and the soft, velvety carpet. 

There were actual violins playing. Not just music over a speaker, but a trio of musicians in the corner coaxing out a gentle, swelling tune. 

Dany couldn’t have felt more out of place, even in her new dress. 

Mr Harlaw had made it very clear where he’d be sitting, and she instantly caught sight of his table at the back. When he’d proposed to take her out to dinner, the specifics of his plan had been almost unnerving, as if he’d been planning this for a long time. 

Perhaps he was just lonely. Or maybe he was a pervert, or he was trying to make fun of her. 

Either way, she would have a way out at nine. She reminded herself of that as she sat down tentatively at the table. 

“Mr Harlaw,” she said, sharpening up her accent. 

He looked up from his phone. “Oh! You must be Miss Targaryen. You are every bit as beautiful as I’d hoped.”

He didn’t look like a pervert. But then again, appearances could be deceiving. 

“Thank you for joining me tonight,” he said, picking up a menu. “Would you like some wine?”

“I’m alright,” she said. The last thing she needed was to be intoxicated. 

They sat in silence for a moment as he perused the menu. 

“So,” Daenerys said. “Can we talk about the autopsy, or-”

“If we must,” he said, rolling his eyes behind his glasses. “It’s a strange coincidence about your name, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that was a real, uh, shock to the system.” _This isn’t about me. “_ We heard that the Iron Islands authorities are looking to get a second autopsy. Is this true?”

“Not really one for small talk, are you?”

“That’s not my job, and it’s not yours.” She stared him down, feeling a little guilty for confronting this otherwise kindly-looking man, but it needed to be done. “I know you’re withholding information from me, and you invited me here under the pretence that you would give it to me. So tell me what you know.”

He looked almost impressed by her outburst. “Very well, then. Mr Orkwood’s death shocked a lot of people. He was a nice man, well liked, no personal enemies as far as I’m aware. And, according to the new autopsy report, the asphyxiation came from him choking on food.”

“But that’s not what happened. He-”

“Yes, yes, we know that. The government are, quite frankly, losing their minds about this. Can you imagine the PR? As far as they’re concerned, this story does not exist.”

“As far as you’re concerned, you mean.”

He sighed. “Perhaps.”

“But you know he was choked to death. This was an assassination.”

Rodrik shrugged. “Perhaps not. Maybe his...lady friend just went too far, and didn’t know when to stop.”

“She would know when to stop. That’s her _job._ If the choking started to feel like it was causing him damage, he would have tapped out. We have records of him going to this establishment before, he knew what he was doing, so clearly the stand-in woman wilfully ignored him.”

Rodrik looked taken aback. “You seem to know an awful lot about this sort of thing.” 

“I do my research,” she said, trying to sound as un-suggestive as possible given the subject matter. “My point is, this was undoubtedly a murder. Now my question is, was it the Iron Islands government?”

“No!”

Her phone rang. She eagerly flipped it over, and saw it was from Varys. It wasn’t anywhere near nine o’clock yet. 

“I really need to take this-”

“Fine, fine. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t look into this much further without putting myself at risk, but you can.” He leaned in closer to her. “If someone is killing off government officials, I want to know who. But they’re covering it all up, because, well, sex. But…” He lowered his voice even further. “What I’m about to tell you, you can never repeat.”

She flipped her phone back over. Varys could wait. 

“Just last week, he hacked into an account of an Iron Islands intelligence agent. Turns out, some organisation had been paying him millions for something. We don’t know what, but a week later both Orkwood and the agent were dead.”

“Shit,” she muttered. 

“Shit indeed,” he said. “Now, a word of advice-”

Her phone rang again. _Not now, Varys!_

“I’m sorry,” Dany said. “You were saying?”

Harlaw retrieved a small box from his breast pocket and placed it down on the table. “Consider this a gift. You might have a little...creature of your own-”

Her phone pinged again, and, doing her best not to clench her fists, she turned it over. _2 new voicemails._

What was so important that Varys had to send her two voicemails?

She lifted it to her ear, and the urgency in his voice made her mind immediately flood with panic. 

“I may have gone as crazy as you, but I think this woman was tailing you at the train station. She fits the description and I’m following her along the waterfront. Call me back, I don’t want to lose eyes on her.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit…

She snatched up the little white box and played the next one. 

“I’m at a club called the Crow’s Eye, by the harbour. She’s in here somewhere, but I think I’ve lost her. Come and meet me here, please, I think this is her.”

“I have to go,” she said, immediately shoving her phone into her bag. “Work thing.”

Hang on a moment,” he said. “I was promised a proper dinner.”

“I don’t care,” Dany said, slinging her jacket on hurriedly. “This is far more important.”

She looked down at her phone again. No more messages. 

“And besides,” she said, trying to maintain some semblance of superiority. “My heart belongs to another.”

_Did it?_ she thought. But it made Harlaw look appropriately shocked, so she decided it was worth it. 

On that note, she dashed out the door, wishing she’d worn some more practical shoes. 

She arrived outside a sweaty, grim-looking nightclub about ten minutes later, exhausted from running in heels. 

“Excuse me,” she said to the bouncer, who immediately held up a hand. 

“Get in the line,” he said. 

“I’m with the Dragonstone authorities!” she protested, rummaging in her pocket for her ID card. “There’s an emergency. Please.”

He squinted at her card. “This could be fake.”

“Do you really want to take that chance?”

He sighed. “Go on.”

She pushed past him, and immediately was overwhelmed by the loud, thumping music in the nightclub. It was so crowded, far more than any clubs back in Dragonstone, and the smell of alcohol and cheap glitter made her head spin. 

_Keep going. Stay focused._

“Varys?” she yelled over the crowd, pushing her way through irritated-looking partygoers. “Varys!”

No response. There were too many people here, and - shit, _she_ could be here, any one of these people could be her -

But she would know her, she knew that, would recognise her face in a crowd of millions if she had to-

“Varys!” she tried again, to no effect. 

Then, after one almighty heave through a group of unimpressed-looking students, she saw him. The unmistakable shine of his bald head was just a few feet in front of her. 

“Varys!” she called out. “I got your call!”

He didn’t turn around. And as she pushed closer, she noticed that he was shorter than he usually was...no, he was getting shorter…

Her hands came to her face as she saw the dark stain on his shirt. The blank, lifeless expression on his face. 

She screamed, but it was drowned out by the thumping of the music. Hardly anyone turned around. To everyone else, he was just another man on the dance floor, and no one had noticed until it was too late.

“Varys!” she yelled, as hot tears began to cascade down her cheeks. She wanted to crumple to the floor, but she couldn’t. She clutched the shoulder of a stranger and dug her fingers in as she let out another scream. “Varys!”

For a moment, in her shock-addled mind, she could have sworn there was a woman looking at her from across the crowd, smirking in glee as the rest of the clubbers began to descend into panic. 

But when she blinked, she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! For the record, Dany's dress is meant to be a slightly more modern version of her Qarth dress.  
> I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback!


	6. She's Not Related To You, Is She?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys deals with the fallout from Varys' death, and receives a strange gift. Cersei finally faces the consequences of her actions and is forced to work with an old friend.

As it turned out, Varys had far more friends than Dany thought he did.

He was a fascinating man, always had so many stories to tell and so much advice to give that made you wonder where he got it from. Every mournful, black-clad person in the sept had known that, were privy to a different little fragment of his life. 

It was awful, then, that the only time it all could have come together was at his funeral. 

_He would have hated this,_ she thought morbidly. _All his friends together. He liked to keep the different bits of his life separate._

Everyone there mourned him, of course, she knew that. But everyone else looked like they were keeping it together, and she very clearly wasn’t. She couldn’t will herself to sing the hymns along with everyone else, couldn’t muster more than a croak. When the septon started talking about what a _good man_ and a _good friend_ he had been, she could hardly stand to listen. His words faded in and out of her ears while everyone else paid close attention. 

_He was a good man. And look where that got him._

She gripped the order of service in her hands so tightly that it crumpled and tore at the edges. 

“And now, a close personal friend of Varys, Mr Petyr Baelish, is invited to speak.”

Dany snapped her head up. “Oh, gods no,” she muttered. 

She turned to Catelyn, who was standing next to her. “Did you know about this?” she breathed. 

Catelyn shook her head wordlessly. 

“I worked with Varys for over ten years,” Petyr said. “I am honoured to be speaking here today on behalf of his colleagues, who I can of course say liked him a great deal.”

Missandei glanced at her uncomfortably from across the aisle. 

“I think we can all agree that Varys was...an enigma, of sorts. He was a good man, patient, wise: a man who had time for everybody.”

He still had that smug smile plastered across his face. Daenerys had half a mind to walk up there and smack it right off him. 

“He loved a good argument: I’m sure I’m not the only one who enjoyed a friendly disagreement with him every now and then.”

A baby started crying, and the noise immediately overwhelmed her, just as jarring as Petyr’s words. 

“He was stubborn - but in a good way, certainly, I-”

Before Dany knew it, she was halfway down the aisle, walking determinedly towards the bright spot of sunlight at the doors to the sept, her mind thrumming as every head in the room turned to watch her go.

She vaguely recalled all five Stark children (the missing Bran and Rickon finally appearing) turning to look at her as she stood up, all their eyes equally filled with concern, but she hadn’t registered it at that point. All she knew was she needed to get out. 

Her footsteps were especially heavy on the hard stone floor. Perhaps that was because Petyr had stopped talking and the sept was so silent you could hear a pin drop, every eye turned to her. 

_Good. Anything to shut him up._

She didn’t even think about looking back until the blinding sunlight hit her face, and she breathed in the cold fresh air, feeling like a pillow had just been removed from her nose. 

At that point, as the noise of the traffic outside filled her ears, she began to think _fuck, fuck, fuck, what have I done, I can’t just leave -_

She put her hands either side of her face, trying to center herself. _I can’t go back in. I’ll just cause more of a fuss._

Oh, gods, what if people thought she and Varys were having an affair? What if they thought she knew some terrible secret of his, and the truth had become too much to bear - well, that was technically the case, but people would think of a different terrible secret than the cause of his death, they would start to talk -

“Dany?”

A soft, concerned voice struck an arrow right through Daenerys’ thoughts, and she turned around. 

“You didn’t have to come out here,” she said. 

Missandei shook her head. “You were clearly really upset. I didn’t know where you were going.”

“I just needed to be out of there,” she sighed.

She turned back to the road, watching the cars whoosh by over and over again. It was calming, almost hypnotic, to watch the monotony of the world outside. 

“I get that,” Missandei said. “I can’t believe they let Petyr speak.”

“I know!” Dany said. “Of all people.”

“Are you ever going to tell anyone the truth?”

“No one is allowed to know the truth,” Dany said sternly. “He was mugged. As far as we’re concerned, that’s the end of it.”

Missandei nodded understandingly. “So if that’s that, where do we go from here?” 

“...I’m going to kill her.” She paused for a moment, thinking it over. “With my bare hands.”

-

After the nightmare she’d had with Osney Kettleblack, Cersei had thought she was finished with casual hookups. But that night, she’d somehow met the most stunning woman in the bar she visited on occasion, and one thing led to another. 

(An important detail, which Cersei herself had somewhat overlooked, was that this girl had beautiful white-blonde hair, and that her eyes weren’t quite purple but they were a stunning deep shade of blue. This had, of course, been a factor in Cersei’s attraction to her, but not one she had paid any attention to. She didn’t need to second-guess her decisions, of course not.)

So, now she was sprawled out on Cersei’s expensive red silk sheets, her hands bound together above her head and her skirt hiked up over her hips as Cersei traced her fingers up her thigh, enjoying the desperate whimpers coming from the woman. 

(There was also the slight issue that she’d asked this woman her name, promptly forgotten it, and now it was definitely too late to ask again. But maybe it was better that way.)

“You’re so beautiful,” the woman whispered, and Cersei chuckled. 

“I know.” She allowed her hand to lazily slide towards the meeting of the woman’s thighs, relishing in the waiting, the anticipation of it all and the shallow breaths coming from her.

She grazed a thumb over her clit, which elicited the most beautiful moan. 

“Please,” the woman breathed, and Cersei only laughed. 

“You’ll have to beg a little harder than that, darling,” she said, tracing a feather-light circle with her index finger. “Please _what?”_

“Please-”

“Cersei?”

Oh, gods no. 

Oh, _seven fucking hells._

She _really_ regretted giving Qyburn a key to her apartment. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she shouted, glad that she hadn’t bothered to undress yet. 

Qyburn immediately covered his eyes. “I need to talk to you!” 

“You couldn’t have just phoned me like a normal person?”

“Um,” the woman said. “Is this...like a part of it, or-”

“No!” Cersei and Qyburn both said. 

“This is most definitely not part of it,” Cersei seethed, “and he will wait in the kitchen until we’re done.”

“He will not,” Qyburn said indignantly. “In fact, she will come into the kitchen right now, because he needs to have a word with her.”

She just glared at him. “How important of a word?” 

“Very important.”

Cersei sighed, pulling the woman’s skirt down. “Sorry. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Wash your hands,” Qyburn said. 

“I’m not-”

“Cersei.” He finally uncovered his eyes to glare at her. “Wash. Your fucking. Hands.”

“She’s blonde,” was the first thing Qyburn said to Cersei, after watching her rigorously wash her hands with soap. 

“And?” Cersei said, sitting herself down at the counter. 

“Is this a narcissism thing?” 

“Please stop trying to psychoanalyse me,” she sighed. “You’ll only scare yourself.”

She cringed a little at her own choice of words, but she’d been going full ham on the psychopath thing for the past five years and she wasn’t about to stop. 

“What’s your name?” Qyburn asked curtly. 

“...Cersei Lannister? What are you-”

“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “So it isn’t Daenerys Targaryen, then?”

_Fuck._

“I do happen to know some things,” Qyburn said drily. “And as for her partner-”

“That little egg-looking man was following me.”

“He was off-limits. You know what, _Cersei?_ I don’t think I can trust you anymore.”

“Trusting me was your first mistake,” she said, but he only rolled his eyes. 

“Enough with the theatrics. If you can’t work on your own, you’re going to have to work with some of our old friends.”

“You can’t mean-”

“Oh, yes,” he said, almost gleefully. “Your next job is in Spicetown.”

“Where the fuck is Spicetown?” Cersei asked. 

“It’s a small town on Velaryon.”

“In the middle of nowhere, on the most boring of the Dragon Islands, with one of the other fuckers I work with?”

“...Not just any of the fuckers, I’m afraid.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re not serious. _Him?”_

“Oh, yes.”

She scoffed. “It’s a miracle he isn’t dead yet. Isn’t he still sailing the fourteen seas on his shitty old boat?”

“As it would turn out, he rather missed the job. Not just the money, but the, uh, privileges too.” 

Cersei rolled her eyes. “Bastard.” 

“A bastard you’ll have to work with.”

She sighed, resting her elbow on the onyx countertop. “Is there nothing I can do to redeem myself?”

“No,” Qyburn said bluntly. “For the foreseeable future, you will not be working alone. And neither will he.”

“So I’m babysitting Euron Greyjoy. What a wonderful fucking job I have.”

“Exactly,” Qyburn said, mock-cheerily. “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.” 

He picked up his briefcase and hauled himself off the chair.

“And next time lock the door,” he said, smoothing down his suit jacket. “I thought after the first time I walked in on you and Jaime, you would have learned by now.”

“That was years ago!”

“And you still haven’t learned.” He looked pointedly in the direction of her bedroom. “This one...she’s not related to you, is she?”

“Get out of my house.”

“If you’re not at the train station first thing tomorrow, I will vivisect you.”

“I am well aware of that. Now get. Out.”

He nodded curtly and walked towards her door. 

“And next time…” She searched for some sort of powerful closing statement, but he closed the door before she could finish. 

“For fuck’s sake.” She slumped back in her chair, feeling completely defeated. Of all the people they could have made her work with, they had to saddle her with Euron fucking Greyjoy, the most insufferable man she had ever met. 

_Oh, well._ She went to pour herself another drink, realising she would already be thoroughly hungover in the morning but not quite able to bring herself to care. 

“...Cersei?”

_Oh, shit._

There was still a woman tied up in her bedroom. 

“Sorry!” She sprung away from the counter. 

_Has she heard too much?_ She pondered as she walked back to her room. _Do I need to dispose of her?_

No, she thought the second she poked her head around the doorway. It had been a long time since she’d had an opportunity like this, and she may as well enjoy her last night of freedom. Besides, this woman was much too beautiful to kill. 

(Even though her eyes weren’t quite the right shade of purple.)

“...What was that man saying about me being related to you?” 

Um? “Don’t worry about it.”

“But-”

“Shhh,” she crooned, pressing a slender finger to the woman’s lips. “I don’t want to hear another word pass those pretty lips. You’re going to keep very, very quiet for me now. Is that understood, darling?”

The woman’s protests died, and she nodded eagerly. 

“Good girl.”

It seemed as though her employers were giving her the full disgraced worker’s experience - the train wasn’t even first class. 

She sat for most of the journey with her knees pulled in tightly leaning towards the window, straining away from the rest of the loud and uncouth passengers on the train and pretending to find whatever was out the window very interesting, even when they descended into the Narrow Sea Channel and all she could see was a wall of black. 

_They must have done this to spite me,_ she thought bitterly. _I bet they’re rubbing their hands together and laughing at my misfortune right now, whoever they are._

To her disgust, she’d even been forced to dress the part. So now here she was, in a shitty train, wearing a shitty _Lannisport Lions_ jumper that may or may not have belonged to Jaime at some point. 

“Cersei!” 

The second she stepped off the train, she instantly gritted her teeth in frustration. 

“Here we go,” she muttered to herself. 

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he said. 

“Good fucking evening to you too, Euron.”

He grinned. “I’ve missed you.”

She rolled her eyes, and immediately began to walk towards the car park. 

“You’re a little late,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“I had to make a delivery.”

“A delivery?” 

“Don’t push it.” She pulled her jacket tighter around her, distinctly feeling the chill of the night air. “When’s the job?”

“Tomorrow morning.” He turned to look at her, a glint in his eye. “Are you excited?”

_I know you are._ “Where are we going to sleep tonight?”

Euron slammed his hand down on a shoddy looking minivan she could only assume was his. “There’s a cushion and a blanket.”

“You have got to be fucking joking me,” Cersei hissed. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, _Your Highness,”_ he said. “We’re on a budget. I know you’re used to fancy hotels and all that, but this will have to do for tonight.”

“It smells like fish,” Cersei said. “When was the last time you cleaned this thing?”

He shrugged. “Apparently, not since the last time I went fishing.” 

She wrinkled her nose. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

He took a step closer to her, and in the dim streetlight she could see his cocky smirk. “You didn’t miss me?”

“Did you expect me to?” 

“Was that so wrong?”

“Yes.” She pulled open the back of the minivan with a violent _shuck._ “And if I wake up in the middle of the night back there and I find you cuddled up next to me, I will smother you with your own fucking blanket.”

He grinned. “There’s the Cersei Lannister I remember.”

“Fuck off.” She slumped into the passenger seat and instantly put her feet up on the dashboard, as he climbed in the other side. 

“So.” Euron gripped the steering wheel with both hands, even though the car was still parked and not going anywhere. “How’s life been treating you since we last saw each other?”

“Oh, you know. I’ve been running around the Seven Kingdoms, killing all manner of important people, looking incredible and making outrageous amounts of money for it. The usual.”

“I’ve been travelling the Fourteen Seas-”

“I didn’t ask.” 

He promptly shut his mouth. 

“Who’s our target?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

She glared at him. “The mission is tomorrow, and you don’t know who the target is?”

“Alright!” He put his hands up in mock-surrender. “You don’t have to shout at me. They’ll let me know eventually.”

She leaned back in her seat again. “They’d better.”

“Although,” he said, far too slowly for her liking. “You can shout at me a little bit. If you want to. It’s quite sexy.”

“You know, we’ve been apart for so long I’d begun to forget why I hate you so much. I remember now.”

“I’m only making an observation.”

“Well...stop observing.” She gently massaged her temples: it had been a long trip over and his presence wasn’t helping her headache. 

“Oh,” Euron said, after a pause that was rather cruelly cut short. “I forgot to mention - I _do_ know we’re here to kill a member of the Dragonstone Intelligence Services.”

_...Oh, this is too much._

There were other people working in those services, people who didn’t have white-blonde hair and striking purple eyes and who gasped so prettily when you murdered their colleague in cold blood. 

But with Cersei’s luck, which was turning out to be pretty shit these days, chances were it would be her. 

_And after I sent her such a lovely present._

-

Daenerys had barely got up from the sofa all day. 

The day after Varys died, she’d mourned and cried and thrown things around the hotel room, gripped the armrest on the aeroplane seat so tightly she thought it might rip off and cursed that evil fucking woman a thousand times in her head, envisioning choking the life from her and stabbing her and kicking her from the tallest building she could find. Her mind had been a blur that day, of anger and pain and just about forgetting what had happened long enough to keep it together while going through passport control but then breaking down into tears the second she walked into the baggage claim area. 

But as painful as that day had been, at least she’d felt something. After the funeral, all she could feel was this deep, empty numbness consuming her inside and out.

Every now and again, she would remind herself that his death was her fault, that she’d encouraged him to go to Pyke and now he was dead, and a tear would roll down her cheek, but she wouldn’t have the energy to wipe it up. The television was playing in front of her, but she wasn’t watching it, she was just staring up at the ceiling.

She had no idea how long she’d been lying there, and didn’t have the will to check. 

The faint sound of keys jingling came from the door, and she let out a sigh. 

“Dany?” Daario called from the door. “Dany? I-”

He walked briskly into their living room, only to come to a halt when he saw her. 

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “Are you alright?”

“One of my closest friends just died,” she deadpanned. “Take a fucking guess.” 

She couldn’t even bear to look at him, and yet he didn’t seem to get the message. He came to sit next to her on the musty brown leather sofa, leaning in towards her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I am.”

“I thought you were at work until five, anyway.” She did her best to wriggle away from him. 

“Football club got called off,” he explained. “The pitch flooded.”

“Oh.”

She could feel him staring at her, but still didn’t meet his gaze. 

“What?” she said irritably. 

“How did he die? I don’t think you told me.”

“He was mugged,” she said. “In a club. He wouldn’t give them his wallet, so they stabbed him.”

“What were you doing in a club? I thought you said it was a business trip.”

“What the fuck?” She finally found the energy to haul herself up, to look at him in disbelief. “Are you really going to interrogate me right now?”

“I was just wondering-” 

“Well, don’t wonder.”

“Am I not allowed to know what happened-” 

She gripped the edge of the sofa tighter, her nails digging into the cheap leather. “I told you what happened. So if you could kindly fuck off, that would be absolutely wonderful.”

She felt guilty for saying that - and even more guilty for pretending she was in love with him, why, _why,_ had she said that, why hadn’t she just turned him down - but the words were out of her mouth now, and they had clearly hit him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I just want to be sure that you’re safe. This new job-”

“It wasn’t because of the job,” she snapped. “And I’m fine. I’m safe.”

_But I couldn’t keep him safe. I couldn’t protect him -_

“If you could leave now,” she said. She deflated into a curled-up position on the sofa, yanking the blanket back over her, ready for another three hours spent completely still. 

Daario put his hands up in defeat. “Alright.”

He started to walk away, but then turned back around. 

“By the way, your suitcase came back. I brought it in, I just forgot to tell you.”

“Leave it in my room,” she said blankly. 

“...Alright.”

The bed the suitcase was sitting on had a similar appeal to the sofa, in that Dany wanted to lie face-down on it and wallow in her guilt, never to get up again. 

Still, she pushed through her fatigue to unzip it, praying there were no complicated documents she would have to sign and send off to confirm she’d received it. 

After all, her other set of pyjamas had been in here, and they were warmer and comfier than the ones she had on. Maybe -

Her face fell as she unzipped the suitcase. Instead of being filled with her familiar blue cotton blouses, smart cigarette trousers and white jackets, it was lined with what looked like a large - and expensive - number of pristinely folded, freshly bought clothes, wrapped in ribbons and parcels. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said irritably, flipping the lid over to look at the label. “They must have sent the wrong one-”

But, no, the label said her name clear as day, right next to her address. This was unquestionably her bag.

She opened it up again, and picked up one of the parcels incredulously. The fabric felt soft in her hands, and had that inalienable smell of unworn clothing. 

It was a beautiful silk blouse, in a stunning turquoise colour with silver buttons all up the front. It was the same colour as the dress she’d bought back in Pyke, and strangely enough, exactly her size. 

She peered into the suitcase. There had to be ten or so items of clothing in there, in royal blues, dazzling whites, lilac and burgundy and ivory: all her favourite colours. _This is strange,_ she thought, her mind still too foggy to properly comprehend what was going on. 

Until, that was, she set eyes on one item she did recognise: her silver dragon necklace, tucked away in the side compartment with a note attached to the clasp. 

She began to feel a cold fear slowly creeping over her, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on what was causing it, because none of this made sense, unless the person who had stolen her bag had gone on a shopping trip with it -

She unfolded the note. 

_Sorry, Dany darling._

_\- Cersei x_

“No,” she breathed. Her hands began to shake, and she instantly dropped the note. “No, no, no…”

She’d never heard the name Cersei before. Realistically, she shouldn’t have known who that was. 

But the second she laid her eyes on it, she knew it was _her._ The woman - no, Cersei, she had a name now, and wasn’t that a perfect name, all sibilant like a hiss and a snarl - had bought these for her. 

But if she’d given her this…

“Shit.” She shoved the suitcase away from her, glancing down at her hands in desperation. Instantly, she ran to the bathroom to wash her hands, scrubbing at them so hard they bled, her breath shallow and her mind racing _she must have put something on it, it must be contaminated, she sent this here to kill me, she’s the one who stole my bag…_

She could feel her throat closing up, and while it was probably just because of fear, her immediate thought was _She’s poisoned me. She’s poisoned me and now I’m choking._

What were you supposed to do if you’d been poisoned? She remembered having to drink saltwater once as a child when she’d eaten the leaves of a poisonous plant in their garden in Pentos, but she hadn’t eaten anything, only touched what was on her skin…

She grasped the edge of the sink and tried to breathe deeply, feeling her head swimming. 

_Call Cat,_ she thought dimly. _I should call Cat._

She held the suitcase precariously as she walked into the dingy back room of the office. She’d encased it carefully in plastic wrap, and she must have looked completely ridiculous on the bus over, but better to look ridiculous than to expose herself to whatever that insidious woman - Cersei - had done to it. 

“There you are. Are you alright?” Missandei asked, and Daenerys promptly shook her head. 

“Can I sit?” 

Robb nodded to the empty chair next to Sansa, and she slumped down into it. 

“I got my suitcase back,” she panted. “But it was full of...well. Clothes.”

“Clothes?” Arya asked, stirring her coffee absent-mindedly. “That’s what we’re here for?”

“What kind of clothes?” Sansa asked. 

“Expensive clothes. Amazing clothes, all my size, all things I would have bought for myself if I had the money.”

Missandei glanced down at it, but Dany put a hand out to stop her. 

“Don’t!” she said. “We don’t want any further contamination.”

“It’s really not good that she knows where you live,” Robb said. 

“Well, next time I won’t write my address on my suitcase.” She looked down at it again and sighed. “You know, just in case it gets stolen by a psychopath.”

“So…” Missandei shuffled away from the offending bag in her chair. “What do you want us to do about it?”

“I need you to fast-track it through forensics,” Dany said. “Sansa, can you check and cross-reference it with the other crime scenes, and find the stores in Pyke that stock these clothes. Arya, can you contact the stores, see if you can find any security footage?” She glanced at Robb. “Where is Cat, anyway?”

“At a meeting,” he explained. “But hold on a minute, you want us to keep going?”

“Yes!” she said incredulously. “We have more evidence than we ever had before. And a name.”

“A name?” Sansa asked, leaning so far forwards the ends of her hair slipped into her mug of tea. “You mean _her_ name?”

Dany nodded. “She sent me a note. It said _Sorry, Dany darling,_ and was signed _Cersei.”_

Missandei wrinkled her nose. “She called you darling?”

“She called you _Dany?”_ Robb said. 

“Not important.”

“I’d say it’s pretty important,” Arya protested. “If she knows your nickname.”

“I...hadn’t thought of that.”

“But _Cersei,”_ Sansa said. “Do you think that’s her real name?” 

“I think so. We know she likes to show off. I’d say even if this isn’t her real name, it’s what she goes by. Either way, we should call her that from now on, I’m sick of saying ‘The Woman’.”

Sansa glanced at the murderboard. “Would have been useful to know that when I was writing half of this stuff up.”

“Oh!” Arya said. “I found something you might want to take a look at.”

She turned her laptop around so that Dany could see the screen, filled with numbers and spreadsheets that didn’t make a lot of sense to her. 

“It’s really weird, I was hoping you could make more sense of it. Those documents Harlaw gave you included statements from accounts in Lys.”

“She had to ask me what that meant,” Robb said wryly. 

“Shh. But it looks like whoever is using these accounts is paying off the insiders in their department. But then I poked around on the transactions, and…” She brought another tab to the forefront. “I noticed this account number. From Dragonstone. Receiving three payments a year for the same amount. Follow the money, and it ends up here.”

“Eyrie Academy?” Robb said, squinting at the bright screen. “Isn’t that where Robin goes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sansa said. “Robin’s our cousin. That’s weird. I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Aunt Lysa’s kind of _persona non grata_ in our family,” Robb explained. “She’s...eccentric, to say the least.”

“...Wait,” Daenerys said. “Did you say your aunt was called Lysa?”

“...Yes?”

Dany really didn’t like the trepidation that was crawling up her spine. “And she has a son called Robin?”

“Do you know her, or something?”

“I don’t,” Dany said. “But Petyr Baelish does.” 

Arya stared at her in disbelief. “What?”

“I thought you guys knew Petyr?”

“We do,” Sansa said, looking equally confused. “Through Mum. I didn’t know he was still in contact with Aunt Lysa.”

Dany had the horrible feeling that, by disclosing the information she had, she was about to get involved in some family affairs she really had no business poking her nose into. 

But she continued anyway. 

“He talked about her a lot,” she said. “You know, at work. I remember once or twice he said he was going to Lysa’s for the weekend. I never figured out if they were just friends or - I mean, not that I think they’re together, I-”

Robb, Sansa and Arya were all glancing uncomfortably between each other. 

“I’m sorry,” Dany said. “I - it’s none of my business, of course, I just-”

“Seriously?” Sansa said. “Petyr and Aunt Lysa are...together?”

“Ew,” Arya said. 

“Not just _ew_. Worrying.”

“Hang on,” Robb said. “He mentioned Robin as well? Not just Lysa, but Robin?”

“Yeah. That was what gave me the impression that they were together, I mean you wouldn’t care about your friend’s kid that much…”

Her sentence trailed off as she looked back at Arya’s laptop. _Eyrie Academy._ A boarding school all the way in the Vale. 

It was probably just a coincidence that their cousin went there, and even more of a coincidence that Petyr happened to know their aunt rather intimately. But for all that to come together at once provided a conclusion that Daenerys was more than ready to jump to. 

In her mind, at that moment, Petyr Baelish was implicated. 

“You alright?” Arya asked. 

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound too convincing. “I just...do you know when Cat’ll be done with her meeting?”

“After lunch,” Sansa said. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing!” Dany said. “Nothing. I just…”

Her gut feeling had been wrong before. But if she was right, in that moment, this was the best opportunity they had to make their way towards Cersei and make her pay for what she did to Varys. 

“I...just need to speak to her, is all.”

Catelyn jumped the second she walked in the door to the office. 

“Sorry!” Dany immediately said. “Sorry. I should have called-”

“Oh, gods.” Cat clutched her chest with her hand, bunching the fabric of her cosy-looking jumper tightly in her hand. “It’s - it’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting to see you there, is all.” 

“Did Missandei catch you up about my suitcase?” 

Cat nodded. “I’m so sorry, Daenerys. That must have been terrifying.”

“Forensics is looking at it now anyway,” she said. “If Cersei tried to poison me or anything, we should know by the end of the day.”

Cat raised her eyebrows. “Cersei?”

“We have a name,” Dany said, indicating the murderboard which Sansa had so dutifully altered. “But I…” She clasped her hands together and took a deep breath. “That’s not actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I didn’t want to bring your kids into this, because quite frankly it’s none of their business - I mean, really, it’s none of my business either, but - well.”

“...Should I be worried?”

“Um...here’s the thing. You and Petyr Baelish go back a long way, right?”

Cat nodded apprehensively. “We went to school together.”

“Right. Well, last year, at our office Sevenmas party, he got drunk. Really, really drunk. I had to put him in a cab by eight o’ clock - I felt ridiculous, he’s twice my age, it wasn’t my job to take care of him, but anyway. Before he became completely incomprehensible, he started babbling to me about how his girlfriend’s son was at a private school, but the money from her husband’s inheritance hadn’t left them enough money to keep him going there. He said he promised her that he would help out, but he had no idea how to do that, and now he was freaking out. Now listen.” Oh, gods, she really hoped she wasn’t about to tear a whole family apart. “Arya found payments from the Iron Islands going to the Eyrie Academy.”

“Eyrie Academy?” Cat said. “My-”

“Your nephew Robin goes there. I know.” She leaned forwards. “Catelyn, Robin _is_ his girlfriend’s son.”

Catelyn’s jaw dropped. 

“I know, I’m sorry - I never would have realised if your kids hadn’t brought it up-”

“That _fucking_ slimeball,” she hissed. Dany had never heard Cat swear so impassionately. “He’s with _Lysa?_ My sister Lysa?”

“He talked a lot about her. He never told me explicitly that they were together, but he must not have remembered what he told me at the party. I’m not sure he thought anyone was ever going to put two and two together, but-”

“Wait,” Cat said. “This was last Sevenmas?”

Dany nodded.

“Her husband died in _November._ November, Dany! And - the nerve, the _fucking_ nerve of him, after all these years of chasing after me even when I was married, to go after my sister like she was some second-best bargain bin-”

Catelyn’s gaze settled on the murderboard, and she immediately shut her mouth. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t even think - you mean-”

“Petyr is the mole,” Dany said. “I’m sorry, Cat.”

She thinned her lips. “It is disappointing that the mole is the one who looks the most like a rodent. I should have seen this coming - not because he looks like a rodent, but...oh, you know.” She sighed. “All the clues were right there.”

“Missandei’s trying to figure out where he’s gone,” Dany said. “We can track him down and bring him in. Hopefully, he can lead us to whoever’s running this, and then…” She glanced at the computer-generated image of Cersei hanging on the wall. “We can find her.”

Catelyn still looked a little shaky.

“I’m sorry, Cat.”

“Don’t be.” Cat shook her head. “You’ve done brilliantly. Varys would be proud.”

_Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that._ Her eyes stung again with the reminder that Varys wasn’t around to see this - he would never watch them catch her, never find out who was behind all this, all because of _her._

“We’ll make her pay,” Dany said. “For what she did to him.”

Catelyn nodded decisively. “We will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'm having a lot of fun with this fic, and I'm excited to explore this idea further.  
> Also, I made [tumblr post](https://claralannister.tumblr.com/post/636878993986043905/heres-a-couple-of-outfitslooks-ive-collated-for) of some fashion inspiration I've collected for Cersei in this fic.  
> (Did I procrastinate writing this by browsing Pinterest for outfits to put Cersei in? Maybe. Mind your business.)


	7. Stupid as a Box of Rocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys and Missandei hunt down Baelish in the search for answers. Little do they know, Cersei is doing the same.

“Morning!”

Cersei grumbled as Euron slid the back of the minivan open and she was exposed to the harsh sunlight. She had slept surprisingly well on the floor, although she suspected she was just tired from the sheer exhaustion that came from being around that insufferable man for too long. 

“What time is it?” she said, throwing her head back and stretching. 

“Seven. I don’t suppose you’re used to getting up this early, are you?”

“I don’t know what kind of life of luxury you imagine I lead,” she said, reluctantly pulling herself up into a sitting position, “but I do still have a job.” 

She shoved the patchy blanket off her and did her best to straighten out her hair. She hated others seeing her with her hair unstyled: it felt all too similar to them seeing her naked. In her old hoodie and comfortable trousers, she was completely out of her comfort zone, especially in front of Euron and half-asleep still. 

Then again, it was still all part of the disguise, just another cover. It wouldn’t do to walk into rural Spicetown looking as glamorous and polished as she usually did. 

“Ah!” Euron said. He came around the back of the van, holding a large black box. “Here we go.”

“What’s that?”

She slipped out of the door, and he held it out excitedly in front of her. 

“Picked these up yesterday.” He pried the case open with one hand, revealing a rather impressive collection of guns. 

“Shit,” she said blearily. “How many people do we need to take out?”

“Just the one.” He grinned. “But I like to be prepared.”

“Hmm.” 

“Remember when we worked together the first time?” Euron said, spinning one of the small pistols recklessly in his hand. “Yi Ti ambassador in Sunspear. The fucker almost got away, but then you jumped on him and slashed his throat open with his own brooch. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

That had been one of the highlights of her career. But she loathed the fact that Euron was bringing it up. 

“I won’t lie to you.” His eyes were gleaming now, which Cersei would have taken as a compliment if she wasn’t so unnerved by this man. “I’ve always looked up to you. You’ve always been this...enigma, so talented and unstoppable and...well. Beautiful.”

“I know,” she said nonchalantly. She pointed at the rifle in the middle of the case. “Have you checked the sights on this one?”

Euron sighed. “Are you always like this?”

“I don’t know what you mean, but the answer is probably yes.”

“Rude.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Are you criticising me?”

“What?”

“Here I thought we were just starting to get along.” Cersei wasn’t quite sure whether Euron would believe her innocent act, after all this time and after everything she’d said to him. However, what she could tell from the way he was looking at her, alongside every interaction they’d had in the past five years, that he was absolutely infatuated with her. If she tantalised him with just the slightest bit of her affection, leaving it out like crumbs for him to chase after, he would be incredibly easy to manipulate. 

“You know I like to work alone,” she said, allowing her voice to drop. “Usually, that is. But if they’re going to make us work together...well, we may as well try to enjoy it, shouldn’t we?”

_ This is my fault,  _ she urged him to think.  _ I’ve misinterpreted what she said. She wants to work with me - maybe she wants more. Oh, gods, I hope she wants more.  _

“Really?” His eyes were brightening up now -  _ good, _ she thought. 

“Of course. I didn’t mean to offend you.” She batted her eyelashes once - not enough to look like she was trying to get his attention, but enough to grab hold of it anyway. “I’m just not used to having...colleagues, is all. But I could get used to it.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Euron said. “I guess I just forgot who I was talking to, is all.” He smiled. “I missed this.”

“Missed what?” An innocent tilt of the head, a quirk of the lips -  _ oh, you are so fucked.  _

“You.”

In the best case scenario, this might fool him into trusting her again. In which case, she could double-cross him and get the fuck out of this nightmare of a job, which would be perfect.

If not, she could at least have a little fun messing with him. Though she hoped it wouldn’t lead him to feel entitled to  _ that  _ sort of fun. 

Euron’s phone went off, and in the silent forest they’d found themselves in it echoed throughout the trees. 

“Oh!” he said. “We’ve got a name.”

Cersei wasn’t sure why her hands were clenched so tightly as he whipped his phone out of his pocket. 

“It’s a...Petyr Baelish.” He shoved the screen in her face. 

He was, quite honestly, the most conspicuous man Cersei had ever seen. He looked almost like a pantomime villain, with the moustache to match: not quite long enough to twirl, but sinister nonetheless. 

(She felt herself breathe a sigh of relief, internally, but she put that down to the fact that he looked like an easy target.

Cersei might have been excellent at deceiving other people, but she wasn’t so good at fooling herself.)

Euron squinted at her. “Does he look familiar to you?”

“What? No. No.” She flexed her hands and brought them to her sides. “I just…”

_ I’m surprised it wasn’t another name altogether.  _

-

“I’m sorry, he’s where?”

“Spicetown,” Arya said, pointing at a miniscule dot on the map. 

“...Is that in the Dragon Islands?”

“Yeah. Velaryon. It’s a tiny, tiny village, so if he was going for obscurity, he’s chosen the right place.” She tilted her head cockily. “Not obscure enough for us, though.”

“We should go there,” Missandei said decisively. 

Dany raised her eyebrows. “Now?”

“Are you trained for that?” Arya asked. 

“It’s a surveillance job in a place I’ve never even heard of,” Missandei said. “We just need to be in the area. We’ll be fine.”

“I remember what happened the last time someone thought they would be fine on a job,” Dany said bitterly. 

“This won’t be like that. We won’t be doing anything dangerous.”

“You never know with Baelish,” Arya said. “But you should be fine. Right?”

She looked pointedly at Dany, who nodded. 

“Fine,” she said. “Spicetown, here we come.”

-

The journey to Spicetown was surprisingly easy: the bridge between the Dragon Islands meant that it was a relatively short drive, and there was no one who was better to share a car journey with than Missandei. 

“So,” she said excitedly, after they’d exhausted their favourite shitty music from their childhood and they were halfway there, “did she say anything about me?”

“Who?”

She glanced at Dany expectantly. “Catelyn Stark!”

Dany rolled her eyes. “If you and Grey weren’t the most sickeningly happy couple I’ve ever met, I’d say someone had a crush.”

“She’s a legend. You know she’s the one who brought down the Bolton crime syndicate. And prevented the sale of Braavosi chemical weapons to the Westerlands. She must have saved the world, like, five times over.”

Dany chuckled. “You want to save the world?”

“Of course I do! I know it sounds corny, but that’s why I wanted to work in intelligence.”

“It’s not corny. I love it. And besides, someone has to even out my cynicism.”

Missandei sighed. “I don’t think you’re cynical at all.”

“Really?”

“I mean, you can be. But I think there’s a lot of  _ saving the world  _ in you too. Maybe too many people just told you no.”

“Are you saying I’m a romantic at heart?”

“Absolutely. I’d say even more than me. You just don’t show it as much anymore.”

Maybe she was right. She’d always been an idealist, a big thinker - and it was people like Petyr Baelish and her brother who had squashed that in her, made her feel stupid for believing in anything important. 

But Viserys was dead, and Petyr wouldn’t be long for this world either if they managed to expose him for what he’d done. Catelyn had warned her that they were after information, not blood, but Dany couldn’t help but be enraged at the fact that he might be in league with the people who had killed Varys. With  _ her.  _

Perhaps that was exactly what they were doing, then. Saving the world, in their own strange way. 

-

Spicetown was exactly as ugly as Cersei had expected. Small, and boring, and with roads that were so narrow and muddy it felt like they were driving through a ditch. 

She’d done jobs in worse places, that was true, but Euron’s presence was just amplifying every little thing that usually would have irked her into and making her completely infuriated. 

“Well,” Euron said, stopping the van in a spectacular example of how  _ not  _ to parallel park, “here we are.”

“What’s the plan?”

“...To kill him?”

She suppressed an eye roll. “I know that, but how?”

“I thought we would just shoot him and run, I didn’t-”

She held up a dismissive hand. “Shoot and run is fine.”

She could see his house outside the window, the big white door with the number 21 on the front giving away that it was their target.

“Hey,” Euron said. “It’ll be a quick job, probably, won’t it? In and out.”

She didn’t like the way he phrased that, like it was the prelude to another question. “Yes?”

“Well, uh-”

“Could you do me a favour and pass me a gun from the bag?” she said, smiling demurely. “I can’t quite reach.”

“Of course.” He leaned over in his seat to reach it, and she took the seconds he was down there to relax the muscles of her face and to get out the eye roll which had been building up for hours. 

“Thank you,” she said, and pocketed the gun the second he handed it to her. 

“I was wondering if-”

“Number 21, isn’t it?” She cut him off again. “I’ll take the front, you take the back.”

Euron’s face fell. “I thought we would be doing it together.”

_ Don’t look so disappointed, you pathetic man.  _ “We are,” she said reassuringly. “I just need you to sneak around the back and make sure no one sees us. Can you do that for me?”

She widened her eyes and lowered her voice, and that seemed to do the trick. 

“Right,” he said, pushing the door open. “I’ll just-”

“I’ll get the front door,” she said. She tucked the gun into the pocket of her ugly puffer jacket as she gracefully dropped herself out from the van and onto the road. “You go ahead, and I’ll follow.”

He nodded eagerly, and as he went to walk ahead of her, her shoulders finally relaxed. 

The road was mercifully empty, and she couldn’t see anyone looking out of the window. The nice thing about doing jobs in places like this, idyllic sleepy little towns in the middle of nowhere, was that no one was ever looking out for this sort of thing. Nothing bad would ever happen there, would it, in their precious little Spicetown, where everyone was friends with each other and people definitely weren’t assassinated in their own homes. 

She knocked gently on the door as she watched Euron slip down the back gate: much less gracefully than she would have done, but it would do. The house would have been a pretty cottage if it weren’t for how unkempt it was, with vines creeping up the walls and the bushes in the front garden overgrown and weed-ridden. 

To her surprise, a woman opened the door, not the man they were looking for. 

“...Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was haughty and grating, and her appearance wasn’t much less offensive. 

“Oh,” Cersei said, flipping a switch and throwing herself into the character of a polite, kindly woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly. “I’m so sorry. Is Petyr in?”

“...No,” the woman said curtly. “He’s gone out.”

“Oh, gosh.” Cersei laughed awkwardly. “Are you his mother?”

“I’m his girlfriend!” she snapped. 

Cersei knew perfectly well she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but watching her get all het up was certainly funny. 

“Right. Sorry. My name’s Jeyne, I’m a friend of Petyr’s from work. I was just in the area, I thought I’d pop by and say hello. Will he be back soon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I come in? I’m so terribly sorry to intrude like this, I really was expecting him to be here.”

The woman pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. “I don’t see why not.”

“Thank you.” She gave a little smile. “I can put the kettle on for you, if you’d like.”

“No, I’ll do it. Come in. I’m Lysa, by the way.”

Cersei followed her into the house, wiping her feet diligently on the mat.  _ Fucking idiot,  _ she thought. 

“Mummy!” A small child emerged from the sitting room. “Mummy-”

“Go upstairs, Robin,” Lysa said. “This is Jeyne, she’s friends with Petyr, and I don’t want you disturbing her.”

He looked sickly, Cersei noticed. Not ill so much as malnourished, like he’d been kept out of the sun. 

Though Cersei supposed she was one to talk, considering that her own children had been...well, rather lacking on the genetic diversity front. 

“So,” she said hurriedly, because she really did not need to be thinking about her children right then, “does Petyr live here all the time? It’s quite the commute from Dragonstone every day, isn’t it?”

“Only on weekends. He has a flat in Dragonstone, but he usually comes here when he’s not working.”

“Oh,” Cersei said. “I hate to be a nuisance, but do you have any idea of when he’ll be back?”

“I’ll call him.”

“No, no, no, that’s alright, you don’t have to-”

She kicked herself internally as Lysa whipped out her phone.  _ I should have left it longer.  _

“We don’t want to pressure him to come home, do we?” she said, trying not to sound defensive. 

“He’s probably just gone to the shops or something.”

“He...didn’t tell you where he was going?” She quirked an eyebrow. 

“No. Hold on, it’s just ringing…” She pressed the phone to her ear. “Petyr? Hi, sweetheart, I’m just calling to let you know that a friend from work has dropped by. It’s Jeyne.”

She prayed Jeyne was a common enough name in Dragonstone that he knew someone there with the same name. Perhaps she should have used Daenerys’ name instead. 

“Yes, she’s just dropped by to say…Oh. Oh, dear, I’ll let her know. Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow. Yes, I love you too.”

She hung up. “Turns out he’s been dragged back to Dragonstone. Emergency work thing.”

“...Well, he must have been in quite the hurry.” She laughed delicately. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“I said he must have been in quite the hurry,” she said, motioning towards the driveway. “After all, he forgot his car.”

-

Daenerys’ phone buzzed aggressively, making her jump. 

She put it on speaker, trying to keep her eyes on the road. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Arya said. “We’ve had some activity, but it’s...strange. Someone just made a call to Petyr’s phone from a landline.”

“...Okay?” That didn’t sound strange at all.

“I’ve located him, but the mobile’s in the same house as the landline. So either this equipment is dodgy, which it isn’t, or it’s just...weird.”

“Maybe he lost his phone and tried to call it from the landline?” Missandei offered. 

“That’s what I thought. But it went to voicemail, and it was only called once.”

“That is kind of weird,” Daenerys admitted. “So where do we go from here?”

“Just try and get there as quickly as you can. We’ll deal with this blip once we figure out what’s actually going on.”

“Look at you, all professional,” Dany said proudly. “Wait, you’re not calling me from the loo at school again, are you?” 

“Dany, it’s a Sunday.”

-

Cersei threw her head back against the side of the van. “This is a colossal waste of time. He’s not even here.”

“He’ll turn up eventually.” 

“Yes, but then we’ve got that woman to worry about. Lysa.” She sighed. “We’re going to have to take care of her too, aren’t we?”

Euron shrugged. “Probably."

A horrifying thought occurred to her. “The child, too?”

“It’s a lot of cleanup, but why not?”

_ No, no, no.  _ She’d made it very clear to her employers that she wouldn’t kill children - anyone over the age of eighteen was fair game, no matter who they were or what they had or hadn’t done, but no children. Someone had quizzed her on it years ago, trying to probe for some soft spot beneath her armour, but she’d simply said that her terms were her terms and that they certainly  _ weren’t  _ a child, so if they questioned her they might end up with The Strangler in their coffee. 

But if Euron killed him, and she had to watch…

“Um, Cers?”

_ Don’t you fucking call me that.  _ “Yes?”

He began to slink into the van. “There’s a car.”

_ Huh?  _ She turned around to see a rather beaten-up green car driving into the lane. 

“Shit,” she muttered. As she, too, dived into the van, she noticed the man driving it - and she didn’t get the chance to look at his face properly, but she could just about make out his moustache. 

“Drive!” Euron shouted. 

“What?”

“Drive!”

He wasn’t going into the house. He had driven right past it, and was going in the other direction. Out of Spicetown altogether. 

“Uhh…” She slammed her foot down on the pedal. 

“He must have known we were after him,” Euron said, as they began to pick up speed. “How could he have known-”

“I don’t know!” she shouted over the roar of the engine. “I don’t fucking know.”

He had quite the head start on them, but she could just about make out the hideous green of his vehicle, speeding shakily down the narrow country lane. 

“There!” she shouted. 

Euron wound down his window, the wind immediately flinging Cersei’s long hair into her face. 

“What are you-” she started, but then he cocked his gun and held it out in front of him, and that answered her question for her. 

She gripped the steering wheel tighter as the bullets bounced off the back of Baelish’s car, creating an even louder noise - it was so overwhelming now, and she had to remain focused. 

Euron let out a whoop as the bullets shattered the rear windshield, sending shards of glass everywhere. 

“There we go!” he roared. 

“He’s still alive,” Cersei muttered. 

“All we have to do is - oh,  _ fuck,”  _ Euron shouted, as the car careened off the road and onto a footpath on the side. “Cersei-”

“Yes, funnily enough I can see!” she yelled as she frantically turned the car around. Perhaps it had been a mistake to be the one driving, but then again she hadn’t realised there was going to be a full-on car chase. “Shit…”

They were driving along the grass now, the uneven ground making the ride incredibly bumpy, and it was harder to speed up. Even worse, they’d lost sight of the hideous green car. 

“He doesn’t have anywhere to run,” Euron said. “He must be along here somewhere.”

“If we just-” She gasped as they turned a corner, and saw that the car had come to a standstill, parked by the roadside. 

“Oh,” Euron marvelled. 

“Shh.” She glared at him. “Get out of the car, very quietly. We’re going to do this properly.”

-

“So, Arya, what have you-”

Daenerys sighed in frustration as the signal cut out, and her phone beeped. 

“Nothing?” Missandei said. 

She shook her head. “I’m just gonna pull over here. Can you try and get Arya back while I call Petyr?” 

Missandei nodded as the car pulled into the roadside, half-buried in a hedge. 

Dany climbed out of the car and held her phone up towards the sky, as if the signal was just out of reach. 

It rang once, and she exhaled sharply as she heard the  _ click  _ that indicated he’d picked up. 

“Daenerys?” His voice was barely audible, and he sounded rather out of breath. 

“Petyr!” she said. 

“Oh my god, Daenerys-”

“Petyr, it’s okay, we just want to talk to you. You don’t need to run from us.”

“They’re chasing me,” he whispered, his breaths shallow. Not from exertion, she realised, but from fear. 

“We’re not - wait, who is?” She made frantic eye contact with Missandei. “Who are you running from?”

“I should kill myself,” he breathed. 

“No! No!” Dany shouted as Missandei got out the car, clearly seeing how distressed she was. “Calm down, please, and listen to me.”

She heard the faint hum of a car engine in the background of the call, and she had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t Petyr’s. 

“They’re here.”

“What?”

“They’re here!”

“Get out of the car, and hide,” she said. “Wherever you can.”

“Okay,” he breathed, and she heard the car door open. 

“What’s happening?” Missandei whispered. 

“He’s being chased.”

“Who by?”

She huffed. “I think we both know the answer to that one.”

“...Cersei?”

“I don’t-”

She jerked the phone away from her ear as the sound of bullets on metal crashed through the speaker. 

“What?” 

“They’re shooting at him,” she said shakily. “Or at the car.”

“Oh my gods,” she heard him utter as the cacophony subsided. 

“What’s happened?” she said. No response. “Petyr? Speak to me. Say something.”

“Where are you?” he all but mouthed. “They’ve got guns. I’m hiding.”

“Listen. We are tracking you, we can come and find you, just...stay quiet, okay?” 

He whimpered into the phone. 

“Is it her?” Missandei asked. 

“Petyr,” Daenerys said. “Don’t say anything. Just tap the speaker twice if there’s a blonde woman there, okay? Long hair, late thirties, anyone who looks like that-”

The phone crackled twice, and her eyes widened. 

“It’s her,” she said. “Cersei. She’s there.”

-

Cersei could hear Euron’s heavy breathing as the bullets finally subsided, and the car had been blown to pieces. He definitely enjoyed that far too much. 

He let out a whoop as he set his rifle down. “And our work here is done.”

Cersei rolled her eyes. “It’s probably better that we had to chase him out here,” she remarked. “It probably would have been a lot messier if we’d done it in his house.”

And if they’d had to kill the child. 

Euron wasn’t really listening to her. “I missed this,” he said. 

“What, killing people?”

“No!” He leaned in a little closer to her, and she became painfully aware that he hadn’t brushed his teeth on the ride over. “You and me. Together.”

She didn’t like the way he said  _ together.  _ They’d been colleagues, nothing more back then, no matter how much Euron had made it clear that he wanted it to be more. 

“Oh,” she said. She allowed her eyes to flicker down, then back up again. “I’ve missed it too.”

Euron smirked lazily. “I’ve been thinking. You and me...we’re better than those arseholes we work for, aren’t we? We deserve better. We...we should leave.”

Her eyes widened. “Leave?”

“Yeah! Tell them to fuck off and go on our own. It could just be you and me, on the road,” he said excitedly. “Like Bonnie and Clyde.”

_ Euron, they both die at the end of that movie.  _

But as she tried to figure out a way to turn him down, a thought materialised in her head. The people she worked for had treated her like shit on the bottom of their shoe lately. She’d done everything she could to kill the people they wanted her to, and what did she get in return? Supervision, pay cuts, and plain old disrespect. 

Perhaps Euron was as stupid as a box of rocks, but he had the right idea. She did deserve better, and she had every right to get the fuck out of there and go freelance. Plenty of people were willing to pay good money to get rid of their enemies, and plenty of people did it by themselves. 

And if the people she worked for caught her, what were they going to do? Kill her? 

She wasn’t really thinking about the details properly, somehow confident that this would have very little consequence on her own life. But that didn’t matter. 

What did matter at that point was getting rid of this scurvy-ridden scumbag she’d somehow been saddled with.

“That sounds wonderful,” she crooned. 

“Really?”

“Yes,” She tilted her head, and leaned in a little way closer. “We could go to King’s Landing. Dorne. Braavos.”

_ Dragonstone.  _

“Highgarden. Anywhere we wanted.” She smirked. “I’ll start the car.”

He grinned. “You will?” 

She nodded. “Could you just do me a favour and check the boot first?”

“Of course.”

She smirked to herself as she got in the van and revved up the engine. Freedom was just a hair’s breadth away. 

_ I need to get a new car first.  _

“What did you want me to check?” Euron said. “I can’t-”

She slammed her foot on the pedal, and threw the van into reverse. 

Euron let out a horrifying screech of pain as it hit him, but he went completely silent as she backed him into the stony wall that was ten feet or so behind the car. 

“Whoops,” she said to herself, as she drove off his body. 

She never had been the best driver. 

“Now,” she muttered to herself as the van came to a stop, “where to next?”

She was still on Velaryon, but she could easily get the tunnel train off it and head back to KL. She could probably make a quick stop off at her apartment there, pick up her things and her money, but Qyburn still had the key - 

The van wasn’t starting again. 

She turned the key in the ignition over and over again, but each time the engine sputtered out. 

“Fuck,” she groaned. She slammed her hands on the dashboard. “Of all the fucking-”

Her eyes darted towards the wing mirror, detecting a flicker of movement. 

No. Not a movement. A man. A man running for his life, who must have got out of the car before it exploded.

“Shit!” She practically jumped out of the car and scooped up Euron’s abandoned rifle. 

Who had she been kidding? She would never be done with the fuckers she worked for. 

-

“Petyr, can you hear me?” Dany shouted into the phone. “Petyr?” 

Nothing. She’d told him to make his way towards the phone mast they’d ended up near, which they were driving towards now, and while the signal was shaky at best, it had been nothing but breaths and static for quite some time now. 

“Missandei?” Arya’s voice came out of the abandoned phone on the dashboard. “You still there?”

“Yes!” Missandei said. “What happened?”

“The house in Spicetown that called Petyr...it’s already on the system Mum put in. It’s owned by a woman who works for some sort of Westerlands intelligence organisation. He’s really up to his neck in it.”

“Have you got the GPS on him?” Dany asked. 

“He’s about five hundred yards from you.”

A gunshot echoed down the phone, and she almost swerved off the road. 

“We have to get to him now!” she shouted. 

“Stop at the next gate. He’ll have to get to you on foot.”

“Shit.” She pulled over. “Petyr? Petyr, we’re at the top of the field.”

She clambered out of the car. “I don’t know if you can see us.”

He said nothing: there was just more heavy breathing into the phone. 

“Just run, okay?” She was shouting now. “Run, and just trust that we’re here, please.”

The breaths turned into something like sobbing. 

“Petyr? Are you running or crying?”

“Running and crying!” he heaved. 

“Okay, we’re here! Just run for it!”

She caught sight of him at last, dashing desperately towards her. She waved her arms frantically, trying to get his attention. 

Then, she saw the figure coming after him, and her heart dropped. 

“Petyr!” Her own voice was becoming raspy now. “Come on! Run! Shit…”

The gate was still locked, she realised. She fumbled with the lock, her hands almost too sweaty to do anything, and she could feel her mind starting to fog with panic and cold fear. 

“Missandei, get in the back!” she cried, as she finally pried it open. 

“What?”

“GET IN THE BACK! Come on, Petyr...” 

Finally, he sped through the gate, almost slipping in the mud and falling to the floor. His face was covered in sweat and tears, and what might have been blood…

“In the back. Go. Go!”

She pulled the car door open and flung herself into the driver seat, hearing his sigh of relief in the backseat. 

But when she was just about ready to make a dash for it, another face crested the grassy slope. One staring with cold intent at the car, with eyes as green as the fields around her devoid of any remorse whatsoever. 

She met Daenerys’ eyes, and if her heart had plummeted before, it flew back up into her chest so hard a sharp breath was forced out of her.

“Cersei,” she breathed. 

“Dany!” Missandei yelled. “Drive!”

She could hardly hear her. All she could perceive was the woman she’d been hunting for so long, who’d been hunting  _ her  _ for so long, whose face she’d had glimpses and memories of but never this close, never understanding exactly who she was -

She raised a gun, and the world around her came into focus again. 

“Fucking drive!” Missandei yelled, and Dany slammed her foot on the pedal, in perfect unison with the sound of a gunshot. 

Her heart pounded in her chest as they careened down the bumpy road, the tranquil, rural countryside jarring with the terrifying nature of the situation. 

Another few bullets bounced off the window of the car - when she’d shot Petyr’s car it had sounded like a rifle, but it seemed she’d abandoned that for a lighter pistol - and each time Petyr let out a cry of anguish. 

She could still see Cersei in the rearview mirror. She was much less put together than she usually looked, her blonde hair loose and messy, and - was that a  _ Lannisport Lions  _ jumper? 

She wasn’t sure if Cersei could see her eyes, but if she could, she was making intense eye contact with her. Hell, she wasn’t even running, she was just walking incredibly fast. 

Impulsively, Daenerys pulled over. 

“Dany!” Missandei shrieked. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Dany gasped for breath, her hands still clutching the steering wheel even though she’d parked the car. “I’m going to talk to her,” she said. 

“Are you insane?” Petyr shouted. “She has been trying to kill us!”

She didn’t move her eyes from Cersei’s reflection. “She’s waiting for something,” she said. “If she wanted to kill us, she could have done it by now.”

“She is an actual assassin!” Missandei said. “She’s crazy, and she has a gun, and she’s here to kill us!”

“I know,” she muttered. “But I think she’s waiting for me.”

She made eye contact again with Cersei. 

Was she imagining it, or was her mouth curling into a smile?

“Dany, don’t you dare-”

She got out of the car. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback you have. <3


	8. Cersei With An "ee"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After fleeing Cersei, Dany and Missandei try to protect Petyr from those trying to kill him. Dany makes a shocking discovery about Cersei's identity, and finds herself closer to the truth than ever before - and in more danger than before, too.

The second her feet hit the muddy ground and she pulled herself onto the road, Daenerys’ breath stilled in her chest. 

Cersei had come to a halt, a considerable way down the road. Dany could barely make out her expression, but she could feel her stare cutting right through her.

_ She’s not getting any closer,  _ she thought, trying to still her shaking hands.  _ That means - that means she’s not trying to kill me.  _

But she was still holding a gun. 

Barely aware of her own movements, Dany raised a hand in greeting, somewhere between a  _ Hello  _ and an  _ I surrender.  _

“Dany?” she heard someone in the car say, but she elected to ignore it. 

_ Maybe she doesn’t want me dead at all,  _ she thought. She felt rather delirious now: her head was spinning with adrenaline and exhaustion.  _ I could talk to her.  _

Later on, she would realise exactly how ridiculous this thought process had been, and curse herself for being so stupid. But this wasn’t later. This was now. 

She felt herself taking a step towards her, light and cautious, then another more assured, until she was walking down the narrow country road towards her, and her boots were getting muddy and the woods were so silent she could hear the rustle of the leaves, and -

Cersei raised her gun. 

Dany froze in place, still not breaking eye contact with her. Absurdly, she felt as though she was dealing with a rabid dog:  _ if I play nicely with her, if I do all the right things, I can calm her down and get her to back down.  _

She did nothing, didn’t raise her arms in surrender or beg for her life. She just stood there.

That seemed to bewilder Cersei. She kept looking down the barrel of her gun, seemingly unable to work out what Daenerys was playing at. 

Then she flipped the gun around and placed it under her own chin.

“No!” Dany shouted. 

She hadn’t meant to react like that, but her instincts had flung her forwards and filled her with panic. Not at the threat of being shot herself, but at the threat of Cersei getting hurt. 

Cersei raised her eyebrows in surprise, then  _ laughed.  _ Not maniacally, but a friendly little chuckle, as if Dany had just made a mediocre joke. 

She put the gun down, as Dany once again found herself trying to stop her shaking. 

_ Say something,  _ she thought helplessly.  _ Do something.  _

A bullet hit the tree a metre to her left, and she let out a shriek and covered herself. 

“Daenerys!” Petyr shrieked from inside the car. 

“I’m fine,” she said weakly. “She-”

She looked back up, and the road was empty. 

“No,” she said. “No, no, no, come back…”

But she was only talking to the trees, now. 

Dany might have thought that, after the traumatic day she’d had, she deserved a bit of a laugh.

But watching Petyr Baelish struggle through a hamburger at a greasy roadside cafe was not that kind of  _ funny.  _ His fumbling had been worthy of a knowing look from Missandei at first, but ten minutes in and with only a quarter of the burger gone, it had become just sort of pathetic. Had the poor man ever eaten fast food before? 

“...So,” Dany said, after watching him put far too much salt on his chips in complete bewilderment. “Who is she?” 

“I don’t know. They didn’t chat much.”

“You mean to tell me that she and that man didn’t say a word to each other?” She gritted her teeth. “Come on.”

“Daenerys,” he said warningly. “I did this for the right reasons.” 

“I don’t want to hear it!” she snapped. 

A few people at the table next to them turned to look at them, but she elected to ignore them. 

“I don’t want to hear whatever your version of the right reasons are,” she said. 

“Could you please not give me a hard time for  _ once?”  _

“Give you a hard time?” Missandei scoffed. “Do you think we wanted to chase you all the way to Velaryon?” 

Petyr took a deep, thoughtful breath, and then a rather undignified bite of a chip.  _ Either eat the whole thing or cut it,  _ Dany thought distastefully.  _ Don’t bite it in half and then put it back down.  _

“Lannister,” he said suddenly. 

“What?” 

“That’s what he said to her at one point. That...that she was a Lannister. I don’t know what that means, it could be an organisation, a gang, a family name.”

“She was wearing a Lannis _ port  _ Lions jumper,” Dany noted. 

“You looked at what she was wearing?” Missandei asked. 

“It’s important to create a profile of...her,” Dany said. “But Lannister...that sounds familiar. Don’t you think?” 

Missandei shrugged. “I can’t place it.” 

_ Cersei Lannister,  _ she thought to herself, trying out the name in her head.  _ Nice name. Rolls off the tongue much more easily than  _ Daenerys Targaryen. 

“I’ll call Arya,” she said. 

“Arya?” Petyr said, as she waited for her to pick up. “You don’t mean Catelyn’s daughter?” 

“Shh. Arya, you there?” 

“Put it on speaker,” she heard Sansa say in the background. 

“Hey,” Arya said. 

“Can you do me a favour?” 

“...Sure.”

“Are you guys okay?” Robb said. “What happened?” 

“We’re fine,” Dany said. “Mostly. But I’m just going to need you to do something for me. Can you try and find out what  _ Lannister  _ means?”

“In relation to Cersei, you mean?” 

“Yeah,” Dany said. “Anything in the database, anything that looks suspicious.”

“Where are you?” Sansa asked. 

“We’re on our way to the sa- to the house. Can you send over the address?” 

“On it,” Arya said. 

“How do you spell Lannister?” Robb asked. 

“L - A - N - N - I - S - T - E - R.”

“L - A - N - I-”

“I’ll send it over,” Dany said hurriedly. 

“Oh!” Sansa said. “We forgot to tell you. The suitcase came back.” 

“And?”

“Her DNA’s all over it, apparently. It matched with samples from the other kills, but nothing else.”

“That’s what worries me,” Arya said. 

“What?” 

“Well, she must know she’s traceable,” she said. “She’s a professional.”

“So she’s either really arrogant, or she knows she can get away with it.”

“Both seem about right. But there was no...poison, or hidden blades, or anything in there.”

“So you could keep those clothes,” Sansa said. 

“Sansa!”

“Well, it would be a waste if you didn’t.”

Daenerys chuckled. “Call me if you find anything important, yeah?”

“Will do,” Arya said. “So do you want us to hang onto the suitcase, or…”

“Just leave it there,” Dany said. “See you.”

“...How is Catelyn?” Petyr asked once she’d hung up the phone. 

Missandei visibly rolled her eyes. 

“She’s fine,” Dany said. “We should get going.”

He looked down at his still half-full plate in disappointment. 

“You can finish your food first,” Dany said, suppressing an eye roll of her own. “I know how hungry being chased by an assassin makes you.” 

The safehouse felt about as far removed from human civilisation as possible, which was presumably the goal. Dany hadn’t even been sure where the navigation app on her phone was taking her as they drove, and for a moment feared it had been hacked and was going to drive them off the nearest cliff. 

But it was there, isolated in the middle of the countryside and thankfully looking rather inconspicuous. 

Honestly, the whole thing made Dany rather nervous. In theory they were protected, but if anyone were to find them there… 

She tried to calm herself once again as she rang the doorbell and glanced up into the security camera to make her identity clear. She didn’t want to be even more worked up while they were here, especially given that her heart was still racing from almost being shot at. 

(That and seeing Cersei in the flesh for the first time. But she tried not to dwell on that either.)

“Can I get your identities?” the man at the door said. Dany didn’t recognise him: he must have been on security detail. 

“Daenerys Targaryen, MI6, Missandei Naath, MI6. Petyr Baelish, MI5.” That felt strangely good to say, like they had one up on him. 

Well, they hadn’t sold themselves out to an organisation of assassins for money. So they did have the moral high ground. 

He nodded. “Come in.” 

She’d expected the windows to be all boarded up, for the place to be dark and quiet and lonely. Instead, there were about ten or so security men wandering around the place, constantly chattering into earpieces and checking things, and the sunlight streaming in made her feel strangely exposed. 

“Fifteen centimetres of plexiglass in each window,” the man explained as he led them through the hallway. “So you don’t need to worry about any funny business.”

Daenerys nodded. She pulled her cardigan tighter around her: for all the security, they didn’t seem to have a lot of money to spare on central heating. 

But despite the danger - or perhaps because of it - it all felt strangely exciting. Not that she would admit that out loud, but the fact that she was at that level of secrecy where she had to be in a safe house with top-level security made her feel important: like she’d finally made it, that her dreams of getting to do actual field work and save people were coming true at last. It wasn’t quite as glamorous as she’d secretly hoped, but it was good enough for her. 

“Bedroom’s down the corridor to the right,” the man said, “and the living room is here.” 

“Maybe we could make some-” Missandei’s sentence came to a sharp halt as she saw who was standing in the living room. “Catelyn. I mean, M - Ms Stark. Mrs Stark.”

Petyr seemed equally as transfixed, though Dany knew it was for all the wrong reasons. 

“Cat,” he said. 

“Hello, Petyr,” she said placidly. 

“Cat. Look. I…” Daenerys almost couldn’t stand to watch him flounder to defend himself, but she also couldn’t quite look away. “What I’ve done is - is not as bad as what a lot of people have done to help the people they love.”

Oh, he couldn’t be serious.

“The people you love,” Cat said pointedly. “And who exactly might that be?” 

“M - my girlfriend. You don’t know her, she lives in-”

“I do know her, because believe it or not I grew up with her.” She gritted her teeth. “I try to maintain a crumb of respect for you, Mr Baelish, I really do, but my sister?”

He cast his eyes down at the floor in shame. 

“Does Lysa know you’re selling information to put my nephew into private school?” Cat said sharply. 

“No.”

“Good, because she won’t. You know, you two almost deserve each other.”

She took a deep inhale, trying to steady herself. 

“We know you’re on the payroll,” Dany said. “So start talking.”

Petyr didn’t say anything. 

“What do they want?” 

“Sorry. I think I’m having an anxiety attack.” 

He grasped the doorframe and started breathing shakily, though Dany got the sense that he’d only decided to be having a convenient anxiety attack two seconds earlier. Not that she thought he actually knew or cared what that was. 

“I need to lie down,” he said. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Dany heard Catelyn mutter. 

“I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “Just let me - give me a few minutes.”

“You can have five minutes to get changed and...generally sort of calm yourself down,” Cat said. 

Petyr nodded, and ducked out of the room. 

“I really don’t have the energy to deal with him today, but you know what, we’re just going to have to do it,” Catelyn muttered, more to herself than to anyone else. 

“How long have you been here?” Dany said. 

“I think I got here just before you did. Are you two alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Dany said, but Missandei hung her head. 

“Actually,” she said hesitantly. “Is it alright if I, uh, go?”

“Go?”

“Home. I, uh, this has been a really weird day and, honestly, this place is kind of freaking me out. I’ve never had to escape an international assassin before, and I didn’t really get the chance to, uh, build up to it. I’ll adjust, it’s just…”

“No, I understand,” Catelyn said. “Go, it’s fine. I’ll take Dany back to Dragonstone when we leave.”

Missandei nodded shakily. “Thanks.”

“Hey.” Daenerys reached out and wrapped her friend in a tight hug. 

“Thank you,” she said. “Really. For coming.” 

Missandei nodded against Dany’s shoulder. “Anytime.”

She broke away from the hug and made her way down the hallway. 

“Call me when you get home!” Dany shouted after her. 

“Will do!” 

Just as she disappeared, the security worker who’d greeted them at the door popped his head into the room. 

“He says he’s too weak to talk,” he said. “Do you want me to drag him out by the shoulders?”

Cat sighed. “I was worried it would come to this.”

“...Come to what?” Dany glanced at her in confusion. 

“I’m truly sorry that you have to see this.”

“It’s alright, Petyr.” 

Daenerys was glad that the chair she’d found herself sitting in was behind the bed, because she could not have sat there and made eye contact with Catelyn in that moment without either grimacing horrendously or bursting into laughter. 

She had wrapped him in a tight hug, and his shaky tears were dampening the back of her cable-knit jumper as she patted his head reassuringly. Dany was sure that those were crocodile tears, and was even more sure that he was putting on much of this just as an excuse to touch Catelyn. At least it meant that they might get more information from him, so Cat’s sacrifice wasn’t all in vain, so to speak.

It just looked  _ very  _ uncomfortable for her. 

“It’s all going to be okay,” she said warmly. “Just tell me who these people are.” 

Petyr sighed. “They call themselves The Seven.” 

“The Seven?” 

“It’s a powerful number, I suppose,” Petyr said. “Seven kingdoms, seven gods, seven hells. Not that it’s a religious organisation, but I understand the thought process there.”

Dany immediately whipped out her phone and started recording him, taking care not to make too much noise and remind him of her presence. 

“They knew everything about me,” he continued. 

“Did they blackmail you?” Catelyn asked. 

“I didn’t realise they were until it was too late. I only wanted to - well, I only wanted to help your sister. They didn’t tell me the leverage they had over me until I’d already agreed to their conditions.” 

_ So you sold information for money, plain and simple,  _ Dany wanted to say. She’d almost hoped he would come out as the good guy in this situation, that he’d been put in some impossible position, but no, he was just as much of a spineless sell-out as she’d suspected. And he’d probably only wanted the money to get closer to Cat, if the Stark children were to be believed. 

“Never mind what they had on you,” Catelyn said. “What information did they want from you?”

“They just wanted to know what conversations were being had,” he said. “They seemed interested in the big picture.”

“About...the Riverlands, the Westerlands?”

“The agent I met was from the Westerlands,” he said. “I assumed he was standard intelligence who just wanted a little inside gossip. People’s whereabouts, I don’t know. Anything and everything.”

“So you sold out your coworkers for money,” Dany said. 

Cat turned around to glare at her. 

“I just wanted the people I love to be happy,” he insisted. 

“Well, I loved Varys. He was my friend, and I wanted him to be happy. But now he’s not. He’s dead. And all this time I thought that was my fault, but I’m beginning to realise it was yours.”

“Dany, please,” Cat said softly, but she ignored her. 

“You do understand what being a part of the  _ Secret Service  _ entails, don’t you?” Dany said. “Emphasis on  _ secret.”  _

“I-” Petyr opened his mouth, then closed it. “I suppose there’s no coming back from this.” 

“No,” Dany said bitterly. “I don’t suppose there is.”

“But I didn’t know they were going to go after Varys,” he said. “I suppose she - Ms Lannister, I mean, took your department rather personally.” 

Catelyn’s eyes widened. “What did you say?” 

“Lannister - we think it’s her last name, or the name of an organisation, or...something. I phoned the Starklings, they’re looking into it.”

“The  _ Starklings?”  _ Petyr looked rather confused. 

“Never mind,” Dany said. “How do they know about the department?” 

“I told them I thought you were still investigating-”

“You told them?” Dany shouted. “You mean they wouldn’t even have known about me if you’d just kept your mouth shut?” 

“You know what? Yes.” 

Catelyn had stood up now, and she was looking at something on her phone rather frantically. 

“You alright, Cat?” Dany said. 

“Fine,” she said hurriedly. “Fine. Just one second.” 

She walked out of the room without looking up, and Dany couldn’t help but feel more than a little helpless as she left. 

“What-” She turned back to Petyr. “What else do you know about Cersei?” 

“Why should I tell you anything?” he said, and that smug look on his face was back. 

“Because if you don’t keep talking, I’ll report you to the higher-ups, and I’m sure selling information for money must count as treason. If you ever want to be employed again, I’d suggest you tell me everything you know about this woman.” 

She hoped he hadn’t noticed how shaky her voice had become, because it was terrifying making those threats. 

“Well,” he said. “They’re very proud of her. There is a sequence, you see. The kills are destabilising from the ground up. No common denominator, other than chaos.” 

“What sort of a goal is chaos?” Dany asked. “That sounds pointless.”

“You see, chaos isn’t a pit,” Petyr said proudly. “Chaos is a ladder.” 

“And is that the line you fed them to impress them enough to give you money?” 

His face fell. “Maybe.” 

She shook her head. “You are such a pretentious piece of shit.” 

Catelyn walked back into the room. “The police have found a body near where we picked you up. Male, mid-to-late thirties, looks like he was ran over.” 

“She ran him over,” Petyr said. “Cersei, I mean. She told him to look for something in the boot and she hit him.” 

Dany raised her eyebrows. “Every time I think I understand just who we’re dealing with…”

“His name was Euron,” Petyr said. “I think.”

Catelyn nodded. “Thanks. I’ll send that over. Other than that, we’re all done here.” 

She still looked quite shaken, but Dany put that down to having Petyr breathing down her neck for ten minutes straight. 

“Petyr, you’ll be here for the foreseeable future, but don’t worry, security is perfectly fine. Dany, you’re coming with me?” 

“Yeah. Daario’s probably worrying about where I am, anyway.”

“Did you tell him where you were going?”

“I said it was a work thing. I didn’t really expect it to last this long.”

Catelyn raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think he suspects anything?” 

“He’s probably more worried about me being a workaholic than being involved in any of...this sort of thing.”  _ Fuck, I’m going to have to pretend to be his girlfriend again.  _

_ I am his girlfriend. That’s not something I can get out of, now.  _

“But can you drop me by the office instead of at my house?” she asked. “I just need to sort a few things out.” 

“I think ‘workaholic’ might be right there,” Catelyn said. 

Dany wrinkled her nose. “Probably.” 

By the time she made it to the office building, it was already night. The streets of Dragonstone were so quiet, she swore she could hear the roaring of the sea even when she was halfway up the narrow stairs. 

The lights flickered on slowly as she walked into their office, and the second the murderboard on the far side of the wall was illuminated she saw the words CERSEI LANNISTER plastered at the top, in what looked like Sansa’s neatly sloped handwriting. 

She smiled despite herself. They were still going, and now they had more information they were closer than ever to this woman. 

And yet she still felt so far out of reach. 

_ She could have killed me,  _ Dany thought.  _ Why am I still alive? Wouldn’t I be better off dead to her? Unless -  _

The door swung open, and Dany screamed. 

“Sorry!” Robb said. “Sorry. I didn’t realise you would be here.” 

“It’s way past office hours!” Dany said, her breaths still shallow from the fright. “Does Catelyn know you’re here?” 

“I don’t live at home anymore,” he said. “Me and a few of my mates, we share a flat by the university. She probably thinks I’m there.” 

“And why aren’t you?” 

“I stayed a bit later than Sansa and Arya. Said there were a few things I wanted to check over.” His voice had taken on an urgency all of a sudden. “I think I found...something.”

“Something?” 

He moved over to his laptop, which Dany probably should have noticed glaring in the middle of the room. 

“So it turns out Lannister isn’t that unusual a last name,” Robb said. “Bit like Stark, it used to be nobility, but that sort of got watered down as people realised that we all couldn’t just marry within the same nine families without all being related to each other. There’s a couple of corporations called things like Lannister, but I couldn’t track down anyone called Cersei Lannister for quite a while.” He opened another tab. “Until I came across this really weird news story from six years ago.” 

Daenerys sat down on the chair next to him, peering at the screen. 

“It wasn’t a massive scandal when it happened. Thing about socialites is that unless you’re really famous, no one outside that circle  _ really _ knows who you are, and it doesn’t become a big celebrity incident like if it was an actress or a politician who did this.” 

“Did what?” The headline at the top of the page read  _ WEALTHY FAMILY PERISHES IN TRAGIC CAR ACCIDENT.  _ It wasn’t a from a particularly notable news outlet, and Dany didn’t recall the story happening - she would have been at university at the time, and she’d always had a keen eye for current events. 

“This woman’s name was Cersei Baratheon. She was married to Robert Baratheon since she was eighteen, which makes sense considering there’s very few records of her before she got married. He was, predictably, also incredibly rich, and he was a few years older than her, and also a domestic abuser. Which is probably why she murdered him.” 

Daenerys couldn’t do anything but gape at him. Her brain could hardly process this much information at once - she knew he was talking about Cersei, but it didn’t all make sense to her yet. 

Robb scrolled down, to reveal a picture of a bloody car wreck with smashed glass glistening on the pavement. “A few days after he mysteriously dies - a death no one can trace back to her, but everyone knows she’s the prime suspect - she takes her three children out in the car. Tommen, Myrcella, and Joffrey. No one knows if she meant to kill them: she was an alcoholic and they think she might have been drunk driving, maybe it was a suicide thing, I don’t know. Either way, all of them died in the crash.” 

Dany blinked a few times, trying to take it all in. “So this Cersei Baratheon woman - she’s dead? So how can she be Cersei Lannister?” 

“That’s the thing. There’s no records of anyone ever finding her body, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern anywhere. No ‘the body was never found’ but also no mention of an autopsy or anything, unlike with the three kids. Which makes me think someone paid to have that kept quiet.” He exhaled. “Arya spent so long digging into criminal records, but we were just looking in all the wrong places.”

“You think she faked her death,” Dany breathed. “That’s why she’s untraceable. But how - someone must have recognised her at some point. There’s no way she could have gotten away with this for so long.”

“Money is money,” Robb said. “The Lannister families we did find were all quite wealthy, and I’m sure this job pays well. Plus if she’s willing to murder her own children, who knows who else she’s offed to keep quiet?” 

“Do you think she meant to kill them?” 

“...Like I said, I can’t say.”

She stared in disbelief at the photo on the screen, the blood running down the pavement, the shattered windscreen, the police tape. 

“How could she have survived?” 

“I don’t know. But there’s a blurry picture of Cersei Baratheon down here somewhere…” He scrolled down a little further, and sure enough there she was. The quality of the image was terrible, and you could only see about half of her face, and she was wearing sunglasses. 

But it was her. Dany knew that instinctively. 

“Shit,” she said. “So that’s how she’s been hiding all this time. As far as anyone else is concerned, she’s dead.”

She almost wished she could unhear all of it. For some strange moment, she’d found a glimmer of hope in the fact that Cersei hadn’t killed her, holding out for the idea that she was just being used as a puppet by the Seven. But no, she was even more despicable than they’d thought, and more elusive. 

_ It’s fine. We’re fine. We’re one step closer.  _

Robb nodded solemnly. “I thought this would be more useful to you than it is to me. I mean…you’re the one going out there and doing things, we’re just helping out. Not that I’d want to put Arya and Sansa in that kind of danger, of course, I don’t want that to change.” 

“No, thank you,” Dany said. “It’s just a lot to take in.” 

“I suppose we’ll want to put all that on the board,” Robb said. “I just hope Sansa can find a way to make it fit, it’s a bit...chaotic, now.” 

“We’ll deal with that another day,” Dany said. “Can you forward me the link to that article?” 

Robb nodded. “I should probably call Arya, let her know we’ve found her. I hope she’s not still awake looking at the database, she’s got school tomorrow.” 

Dany looked at him fondly as he slumped back over his laptop, his words eliciting a strange bittersweet warmth in her. She couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was, until - 

“Robb?” 

“Yeah?” 

“You’re a good brother, you know that?” 

“What do you mean?” 

Dany smiled sadly. “The way you talk about your sisters...you really care about them, don’t you?” 

“I just want them to be safe, is all,” he said. “I don’t want them to get in over their heads. Dad dying really hit both of them hard - I mean it hit me too, don’t get me wrong, but when that happened I felt like I had more of a responsibility to take care of them.”

The ghost of tears began to prick at her eyes, and Dany chided herself for becoming so emotional. It was too late, and she was too tired. “My brother was...awful to me,” she said. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He’s gone now, and I...I don’t know. But I would have given anything for a brother like you. They’re so lucky to have you.” 

“You think so?” 

She nodded. “Yeah. Sorry if that was a weird thing to say, I just - it’s been a long day.”

“It’s fine. I think...maybe I needed to hear that.” 

“Yeah.”

“Oh! The suitcase is here. In case you wanted to take it.” 

“Will you judge me terribly if I do?” she said. 

“Not at all. She’s got good taste, that Cersei Lannister. For a dead woman, anyway.” 

Dany chuckled. “I’ll take it.” 

_ Like Sansa said, it would be a waste.  _

She closed the door to the flat quietly, praying that Daario was still out. He’d said he was going to the pub with a few of his old uni friends, and she hoped he’d stuck to the plan and not hung around moping on the sofa, pining after her. 

Thankfully, the rooms all seemed to be still and silent, and the second Dany was certain she was alone, she flung the suitcase onto her bed and opened it up. 

Immediately, she spotted her silver dragon necklace gleaming atop the rest of the fancy clothes, and she let out a sigh of relief. She would have hated to lose the one thing she had left of her family: while she didn’t remember them at all fondly, the material connection felt more like a link to the concept of a family as a whole, rather than the one she’d actually had. 

She clasped that around her neck, her hands still tense and unsteady from the terrifying day she’d just had: it felt so easy to forget that it had all happened in one day, that mere hours before she had been driving through the quiet roads of Spicetown followed by a woman who should have been dead but wasn’t. 

_ I should go to bed early tonight, _ she thought.  _ Get some rest and then start tomorrow afresh with everything I know now.  _

Cersei Lannister - or Baratheon, or both. The Seven. Who she was, who she worked for: what she looked like outside of a foggy memory. It would all be so much easier to deal with in the morning, she supposed. 

Still, she couldn’t help but look in the suitcase, once again reminded that Cersei really  _ did  _ have excellent taste, and had known exactly what Daenerys would have bought for herself. That still unsettled her, especially since she apparently hadn’t meant to hurt her by giving her any of these things. It had just been to tantalise her, she presumed, with the knowledge that she had been so close and yet so far. 

_ But she could have killed me today, and she didn’t.  _

She tried to dismiss that. They wouldn’t get anywhere if she kept making Cersei into someone she wasn’t: if anything, the things she’d learned today should have made her want to completely distance herself from her, to throw the contents of the case into the bin and never look at them again, knowing the monster who’d paid for them. 

But she still found herself rummaging through it, picking things up, holding them against her  _ \- these would all fit me perfectly,  _ she thought rather selfishly. 

Her hand settled on a rather beautiful maroon dress, and before she knew it she was stripping off her crisp white blouse and checked trousers and pulling it over her head, smoothing out her hair and relishing the feeling of the soft silk on her skin. 

She turned to look in the mirror, and as much as she hated it, she gasped. The dress was showy in an elegant way, coming off her shoulders and revealing the slightest hint of her cleavage but not dipping low enough to show too much. The waist was cinched tightly, but not too uncomfortably, and the skirt flowed down to her mid-calves. 

_ This is ridiculous,  _ she thought.  _ I look stupid - perhaps Cersei doesn’t understand that normal people who aren’t obscenely wealthy don’t just swan about their flats in expensive silk dresses.  _

But it suited her. 

“I need a drink,” she muttered to herself, staring her reflection dead in the eye to try and put some semblance of rationality into her own head. 

On her way to the kitchen, her phone pinged, and she looked down absentmindedly to see that Robb had forwarded her the link to the article about Cersei.

“Seven hells,” she muttered as she scrolled through it once again. “That’s fucked up.” 

“What’s fucked up?”

It took her a few seconds to register the voice, and she looked up from her phone rather casually just as the thought  _ I’m supposed to be alone  _ began to form. 

She heard the phone fall to the floor, but she didn’t bend to pick it up. She was more preoccupied with the woman sitting at her kitchen table, uninvited, with a glass of wine in front of her. 

“Don’t run.”

Dany cried out, a shaky, desperate scream ripping from her throat. 

“Or scream.” 

Her gaze was just as cold and unfeeling as she remembered, and it sent a shiver through Dany’s entire body as she tried to avert her eyes. 

Instinctively, she reached for the kitchen drawer and pulled out the sharpest knife she had, holding it in front of her. “Don’t fucking move. Don’t try anything. I will call the police-”

Cersei chuckled, and took a sip of her wine. “If you call the authorities on me, I will have to kill you, and neither of us want that, now do we?” She glanced down at the glass. “This is really lovely, was it a present?” 

Dany just gritted her teeth and stretched her arm out further. 

“There’s no need to get all tense like that. I’m just making conversation. Was it a present?” 

“Yeah,” Dany said. “From my birthday.” 

“Hmm,” Cersei said. “Thank you. You look lovely in that colour, by the way - you should wear red more often, it really suits you.”

“Shut up. I’ll-” She glanced at the door behind her, really wishing she’d made a run for it while she still had the chance. 

“You’re welcome, by the way. Those clothes cost me a small fortune - well, it hardly made a dent, but I’m sure it would have put someone else into a world of debt.”

Cersei had somehow found the time to clean herself up, do her hair, and change into an elegant black suit which made her look even more sharp and menacing than she had that afternoon.  _ Of course she would want to make an entrance.  _

“I know who you are,” Dany seethed. “I - we’re onto you.”

“Oh, no,” Cersei said, lifting her hand to her heart in mock _ - _ fear. “You’re onto me? Dear me, I’d better pack my bags and flee to Essos.” 

“Cersei Lannister,” Daenerys said. “That’s who you are. We know everything-”

Cersei held out her hand, stopping Dany mid-sentence. “I’m sorry, who?”

_ Huh?  _ “...You are Cersei Lannister, right?”

“Say that again.”

“Cersei Lannister.”

She huffed. “It’s Cers _ ee.  _ With an  _ ee.  _ Not  _ Cersay.” _

“...Oh. Sorry, I just...I’ve never heard anyone say it out loud properly. I just read it off your note and I’ve pronounced it like that-“

“Well, learn to say it properly.”

“...Cersei.” She felt embarrassed, somehow, for getting her name wrong.  _ You have nothing to be ashamed of, Dany. She’s the murderer - and the one who broke into your house. _

Her grip on the kitchen knife tightened. 

“Now.” Cersei smiled brightly. “Put that thing down, and come and have a seat.”

“Are you going to kill me?” 

She said “No,” and that was more frightening than it would have been if she’d said  _ yes  _ and lunged for her throat. 

“I just want to have dinner with you, darling.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for leaving you all on a bit of a cliffhanger. It's been a weird month.  
> Thank you so much for reading, and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
